What Is Wayland and What Does It Mean for Linux Users?
1 min read
Summary
Wayland is a modern display protocol and alternative to the X Window System (X) that is optimised for use with modern hardware and displays, offering greater performance and smoother rendering.
As it is a newer system, it has a simpler, more modern design that is easier to maintain, debug and secure, bringing improvements to latency, screen tearing and sync and offering native support for modern input devices.
As it is designed to run on modern systems, it is not always compatible with older applications, although it does offer a compatibility layer in the form of XWayland to enable improved functionality.
It is the default display server in many Linux distributions including Ubuntu, and for both GNOME and KDE Plasma in Fedora, and Arch Linux users can enable it via package managers.
For developers, it offers improved support for high-DPI displays, making it easier to support modern hardware and software requirements.
