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⇱ Wayback Is An Experimental X11 Compatibility Layer For X11 Desktops Using Wayland - Phoronix


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Wayback Is An Experimental X11 Compatibility Layer For X11 Desktops Using Wayland

Written by Michael Larabel in Wayland on 29 June 2025 at 07:07 AM EDT. 181 Comments
Wayback is a new open-source project working on providing an X11 compatibility layer for running full X11 desktop environments using Wayland components with a rootful XWayland server.

Open-source developer Ariadne Conill announced the Wayback project this weekend in its currently-experimental form. Conill who is an Alpine Linux developer hopes that Wayback will be eventually suitable for running X11 session desktops atop Alpine Linux and the like with Wayland.

👁 Wayback


The Wayback project self-describes itself as:
"Wayback is an experimental X compatibility layer which allows for running full X desktop environments using Wayland components. It is essentially a stub compositor which provides just enough Wayland capabilities to host a rootful Xwayland server.

It is intended to eventually replace the classic X.org server in Alpine, thus reducing maintenance burden of X applications in Alpine, but a lot of work needs to be done first.

Wayback is an experimental state: expect breaking changes, and lots of bugs. Please submit pull requests fixing bugs instead of bug reports if you are able."

The Wayback code depends upon Wayland, of course, as well as xkbcommon and the wlroots compositor library. More details on Wayback via the GitHub project site.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.