X11 Users May Face Continual Incompatibility with Wayland
Wayland, a 16-year old spring chicken in the world of desktop systems, is increasingly being adopted as the successor to the over-40-year-old X Window System (X11). However, as it strives to replace X11, Wayland still faces several notable issues in comparison.
Application Compatibility
Many legacy applications that rely on X11 either need to run through XWayland (a compatibility layer) or must be ported to support Wayland natively. While XWayland performs well for most desktop apps with minimal overhead, some X11 features do not translate well to Wayland’s security model, causing issues such as difficulties with screen recording and specialized input handling. Furthermore, running X11 and Wayland apps side-by-side can disrupt some functionalities like drag-and-drop and clipboard sharing. Projects like “Wayback” aim to preserve full X11 desktop environments under Wayland, but these are experimental and not yet mature solutions.
Graphics Tablet Support
Wayland currently has less consistent and sometimes problematic support for graphics tablets. Users report issues with responsiveness and customization compared to the mature, well-supported X11 drivers and input models.
Multi-Monitor Fullscreen
Multi-monitor setups and fullscreen applications behave less predictably under Wayland. Problems include unreliable multi-monitor fullscreen behavior and lack of support for features like overscanning and fractional scaling, which X11 handled more flexibly.
Accessibility and Input Methods
Wayland’s support for on-screen keyboards, input method editors for complex scripts (such as Japanese), and other accessibility features is less mature. Users report regressions compared to X11 in onscreen input and accessibility support, posing challenges for international users and those relying on assistive technologies. Global hotkeys and system-wide keyboard shortcuts are also more limited or harder to implement securely on Wayland, contrasting with the more permissive X11 setup.
Input Latency
Wayland often provides better input latency and smoother rendering by design due to its modern architecture. However, in practice, some users experience latency issues with particular hardware or drivers, especially older GPUs (like NVIDIA’s GT610 and GT710), where Wayland’s driver support is less optimized compared to mature X11 drivers. The latency benefits of Wayland are generally retained for native Wayland apps, but with XWayland applications, there can be additional overhead and subtle timing issues.
In summary, while Wayland offers architectural improvements and better security over X11, it currently faces various practical drawbacks related to compatibility with legacy applications, incomplete input device support (notably graphics tablets), multi-monitor fullscreen behavior, accessibility, and uneven driver support impacting input latency. The ecosystem is actively improving, but full parity with X11 in these areas has not yet been achieved as of mid-2025.
Over 1,150 comments were received from the YouTube community alone, reflecting the ongoing discussions and debates surrounding Wayland’s adoption and the challenges it faces.
- The transition from X11 to Wayland encounters complications regarding hardware compatibility, particularly with graphics tablets, as some users have reported issues with responsiveness and customization compared to the well-established X11 drivers.
- In the realm of data-and-cloud-computing, the hardware latency benefits typically offered by Wayland's modern architecture can be compromised, especially with older GPUs like NVIDIA's GT610 and GT710, due to the less optimized Wayland driver support in comparison to X11.
