Half of Linux Users Stick with X11, Despite Years of Wayland Being Forced | Hacker News Reader

Half of Linux Users Stick with X11, Despite Years of Wayland Being Forced

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27 pointssnvzz25 comments

I want to like Wayland, but they've really thrown the baby out with the bathwater. What matters to users is usability and, in this case, compatibility; not theoretical purity. The fact that I had to go seek out a way to run a headless Xwayland session to run Audacity without crashing means that Wayland is not ready for primetime (even if this should theoretically be fixed by Audacity).

It's not just theoretical purity. Wayland also plugs pretty big security holes in X, like the ability to implement global keyloggers.

At the cost of fragmenting the APIs to do any kind of related thing between all the different implementations (and making each one special-purpose as opposed to having a generalized mechanism to muck around with input and output).

Apparently X11 has a security extension [1]. There was a discussion some months ago [2].

Xenocara (X on OpenBSD) improves security by dropping privileges and using features like pledge [3], but I don't know how this affects the feasability of keyloggers.

[1] https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xextproto/security.ht...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768745

[3] https://man.openbsd.org/pledge.2

I can't dynamically resize my desktop to any arbitrary resolution in Wayland, whereas under X11+Nvidia it's just "nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode=..."

This is mandatory for me as I'm constantly connecting into my workstation from other devices via Moonlight or Chrome Remote Desktop and I want the streaming resolution to match the resolution of my client.

    swaymsg -- output eDP-1 mode --custom 1900x725

Setting arbitrary custom resolutions on the fly works fine on Wayland for me.

surprisingly lacking in Gnome

I've used https://github.com/maxwellainatchi/gnome-randr-rust for this for Sunshine sessions in Gnome.

Gnome considers features a bug, so not at all surprising.

I use "wlr-randr"

https://sr.ht/~emersion/wlr-randr/

GNOME has already dropped support for X11, and KDE Plasma is planning it for the next major point release (6.8): https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-f...

That might change things a bit.

I have a desktop and laptop with X11 and another laptop and phone with Wayland. It's not because I prefer one over another intrinsically, it's because I use XFCE on the laptop and desktop, GNOME on the other laptop, and Phosh on the phone.

That being said, they all run about the same to me? If XFCE swaps to Wayland, I probably will too. I have run XFCE for a long time, so I have been experimenting if I like GNOME or not and if to switch.

How is it having a Linux phone? Do you use it as your main Phone? I kinda want to try it on an old phone i have just to tinker around a bit but that will never be a good of a test as using it as your main device is.

How well do android apps work? what about banking apps? any issues that would make u NOT recommend it to other people? Are there many apps that are made for linux phones (or have a UI that works good with phones) so that you are not missing anything?

> How is it having a Linux phone? Do you use it as your main Phone?

Yes, I use it as my main phone. I like it, it reminds me a lot of the early Android days when I felt like I had complete control of the device, and I can customize it how I want to. If you want to tinker with it, I recommend a Oneplus 6/6T. They are sub $100 and its very well supported (that's what I am now using as my daily phone, with Mobian installed). I used to use a Librem 5, but it's battery life isn't great. The Oneplus 6 has no problem with a whole day's battery life with medium usage.

> How well do android apps work? what about banking apps?

I don't know, I tend not to use Android apps. Waydroid exists if you want to use them, and I have done that in the past.

> any issues that would make u NOT recommend it to other people?

Many of the devices have their own paper cuts to get it to work, and each model has their own quirks. For the Oneplus 6, calls have an audio problem with VoLTE that isn't fixed.

> Are there many apps that are made for linux phones (or have a UI that works good with phones) so that you are not missing anything?

For my use cases, it works. That includes SMS/MMS, voicemails, calls (sometimes, but I don't get many calls), email, car/bicycle/walking navigation, Signal, internet (Firefox), Matrix. Others have different use cases, so YMMV.

Thank you for the very thorough answer!!

Of course. I run XFCE and don't give half a fck about what's underneath.

As long as XFCE runs on X11, I'll stick to X11.

Gnome is brain-damaged, I'd rather stick to an *allegedly* insecure X11 than switch to Gnome+Wayland.

Everything that I need works perfectly on X11.

Why would I move to Wayland where at least some things DO NOT WORK?

I'd happily jump, there's just no AwesomeWM successor, and I want to bring a decade's worth of custom bindings with me

Nice to see a fellow awesome( )wmer, hi!

You might want to give Mango a spin: https://mangowc.vercel.app/ - Docs: https://mangowc.vercel.app/docs

It looks nice, but I dont actually use tiling features that much.

I just like easy reliable manual placement

Not a Linux user but Wayland on FreeBSD is not production-ready. So I don't have a choice yet.

I've been running Sway (wayland) on FreeBSD for years without issue.

Yes it's in combination with KDE that it doesn't work well yet. Simpler window managers are ok. But big desktop environments still have major issues with freebsd's wayland. KDE for sure and I believe Gnome also (I don't use it).

Completely safe in situations like Qubes.

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