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.



Do you have some examples for someone who has basically no idea about linux?
can’t speak for OP but the only beef I have with wayland is discord. If i’m in voice comms it will ONLY work if I’m either in a game or my discord is focused. if I’m in my web browser or doing something else like in an IDE or terminal etc then voice doesn’t work. It’s annoying.
If anyone has a workaround for that I’d love to hear it. on x11 never had these issues but I can’t use x11 as my primary machine is a hybrid nvidia and amd gpu laptop so no gaming on x11.