I really wish they would figure this out. It just feels like with Threadripper etc the time is perfect for a return of thin-clients/not-so-dummy terminals running X11-like applications over the network on a server. Especially for development where many of us are running under-powered laptops and could use the boost to compilation from a beefy machine.
I wasn't talking about X11, just that capability.
Never heard of Waypipe before, but it was mentioned in a sibling comment, and that might be exactly what I'm looking for.
If anything, the variety of alternative solutions for that today -- everything from single-app to high-res full-desktop game streaming -- are much more robust and viable on modern networks than the X approach ever was, even if it was a neat-o "freebie" thing that fell out of its design. You get what you pay for, I guess.
When you start to consider things such as HDR, hardware planes (important if you want energy efficient video decoding) etc, the protocol just doesn't make that kind of thing easy, compared to Wayland which does by it's use of surfaces etc.