I think there's a certain necessity in ensuring that something like this
has a standard that remains relatively up to date.
Even if it can't support every use case, why can't that be something we
all collaborate on actively, rather than leaving ourselves behind and
/hoping/ that someone else fixes it?
Not to mention, there are a large amount of use cases wayland
/can/ support- i'm nothing more than a casual user with a pretty
standard workflow, and while i've never appreciated the "it works for
me" logic... it /does/ work for me. And there are a lot more people like
me than there are people like you.
Which isn't to throw shade, it's just to say two things: /most
people/ can use Wayland just fine. Everyone i know personally probably
runs a Wayland system because they don't rely on the fringe cases that
it doesn't support that X still does. And two: get on wayland, and start
contributing. If we had people developing these protocols to fix the
broken fringe use cases that X supports, it would be fine! But from
where i'm standing, it seems like the only people still fighting for X11
support are content to use it alone and contribute nothing to making the
more up-to-date alternatives better- all while complaining about the
lack of support in said alternatives.
I'd be lying if i said that i didn't run into issues with Wayland's lack
of protocol support that bugged me at times, but you know what i do?
Work around it, and try my best- as a non-dev- to actually get someone
to change it.
I'm not saying anyone should be forced, but isn't this genuinely just
going to be for the better of Wayland in the end? Once the complete
deprecation of X11 hits, how fast are we going to start patching these
holes out of necessity? No one is doing that now, because no one
necessitates it.
Also @ Valder's point: it's likely that a lot of that usage comes from
people using alternative desktops that have yet to fully support
wayland. And even so, some distros also still ship with X11 as an option
by default. Wouldn't that skew the download statistics?? Not everyone
who owns a package is always actively using it
That's all jut my take, at least. I'm not a dev, nor do i have a
particularly fringe use case, so maybe my perspective is skewed, but still.
On 12/2/25 04:14, Richard Troy wrote:
On Thu, 27 Nov 2025, Valder N. wrote:
I hope you understand that even according to the data provided in the
article, X11-session is used by 30% of active users. In reality, this
number is significantly higher, and to verify this, you can refer to the
statistics on the use and downloads of individual software packages
in the
repositories of active distributions. However, even 30% (!) should be
more
than enough to justify the need to continue supporting this protocol.
Valder, you get a BIG thank-you from me:
Wayland JUST DOES NOT WORK in my environ at all. Full Stop. I've tried
and gave up.
Valder's right: I'm not in the KDE statistics, but the repo-fetches
would show my downloads of the X versions.
I've looked into the WHY of Wayland and so far as I can tell - and I
could be wrong - the real motive is to move into a "containerized"
"virtualization" world that most of us just don't need. The only
reason Wayland can "get away with" all the extra overhead is because
many users just don't use all the power of their machines.
If you think I'm wrong don't just TELL ME I'm wrong or ignore this:
EXPLAIN WHAT THE USE CASE IS without resorting to containerization and
/ or virtualization - that is, the addition of overhead for the sole
purpose of "isolation" as if one box is more than one. If there's
another important use case, I've never heard it.
This is, in my view, unconscionable on other grounds: YOU may see it
as noise, but as a member of the EBT ("Electricity Brain Trust" -
arrogantly named, I know!), I'm very well aware of just how much power
is going to computing these days, even before the recent "AI" boom,
and the power consumption by data centers is both driving up
electricity rates around the USA and mostly polluting and "going the
wrong way" with the current biosphere's vital decarbonization needs.
Ignore all that if you want, but what's NOT arguable is that Wayland
is a LONG, LONG way from ready for prime-time and anyone who tells you
otherwise is ignorant of important facts such as Valder just articulated.
Further, there's no real need to change OFF of x-11. It's MORE WORK to
switch to Wayland. Why do it? Because we can? Well so far you can't!
ALL talk of eliminating support for x-11 is hugely misguided and, dare
I say it, a stupid move.
...If x-11 support ever is removed, I might end up a
source-code-warrior like Cristian, "fighting to keep the stupid at
bay" or however he might articulate his willingness to go hack source
code to keep the tools useful, but I'd rather not!
LET Wayland PROVE ITSELF FULLY before any such talk. As I said, it's a
long way off.
Richard
--
Richard Troy, Chief Scientist
Science Tools Corporation
510-717-6942
[email protected], http://ScienceTools.com/
I pledge allegiance to We, The People, to mutual peace and harmony, and
to the natural Earth and biosphere upon which We, The People, depend.
