Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself.
In other words, the GNOME project is finally closing one of the longest chapters in Linux desktop history. With the upcoming GNOME 50 release, scheduled for mid-march 2026, the desktop environment will officially drop support for the native X11 session, making Wayland the sole display system moving forward.
While I have always found GNOME to be extremely limiting and highly opinionated, I don’t mind this change. Wayland has improved quite a bit and will only get better with time, x11 is an aging standard. It’s natural that it will eventually be dropped in favor of a new one. Wayland too will be in this position as another display server replaces it as well.