Frequently Asked Question

What is the difference between X11 and Wayland?

X11, the X Window System, has been the standard Unix display server since 1984. It is a network protocol: applications ("X clients") connect to a server that owns the screen, keyboard, and mouse, and any client can talk to any server, locally or over ssh -X. That flexibility was revolutionary in the 1980s but has aged badly. The security model is essentially non-existent, every X client can read every other's keystrokes and screen, and the graphics model predates compositing, so modern effects need awkward workarounds.

Wayland is a much simpler replacement designed in the late 2000s. There is no separate server; the compositor (Mutter for GNOME, KWin for KDE, Sway, Hyprland) is the display server, talking directly to the kernel's DRM/KMS subsystem and exposing a minimal protocol to clients. Each client is isolated from the others, frames are synchronised with the display, and HiDPI and fractional scaling are first-class. Wayland is now the default on Fedora, Ubuntu, and most modern installs. Compatibility with legacy X11-only applications is handled by XWayland, a small X server that runs nested inside the Wayland session.