As Linux distros and desktop environments continue to march on, we're seeing developers take different stances on how they handle the X11 vs. Wayland problem. Some developers are keeping an X11 and a Wayland version of their software around to cater to both parties. Some are planning to get rid of X11 entirely, and others are going back to X11 with a potentially new and improved version of it.

Well, it seems another team has decided to hang up X11 for good and focus on Wayland. The team behind the Budgie desktop environment is forcing Wayland-only for version 10.10, in preparation for the release of Budgie 11, the first major version upgrade in a decade.

Budgie 10.10 is canning X11 and going Wayland-only

Ten years of work come to a close

As spotted by 9to5Linux, Joshua Strobl of Budgie wrote up a blog post explaining what we can expect from version 10.10. The spotlight feature is the departure from X11, marking 10.10 the first version of Budgie to go Wayland-only. The change lays the foundation for a future release of Budgie 11, which will bring ten years of version 10 to an end. Once 11 releases, 10 will be put into "maintenance mode" as the team goes all-in on the newest version.

So, what will this new version look and feel like? Well, it seems the Budgie team doesn't want to rock the boat too hard with this transition:

Fundamentally, the experience of using Budgie Desktop under Wayland remains the same as it was under X11. You still have your applets, panels, and Raven, along with desktop icons provided by Budgie Desktop View. Your keyboard shortcuts remain familiar. The team has put extensive effort into ensuring that the transition to Wayland is as seamless as possible for end users.

As such, the greatest change for Budgie users comes down to the apps they use. They may find that some of their favorite tools don't work as well as they did under X11, and given how 10.10 is now Wayland-only, it'll probably come down to finding new apps, sticking with an older version of Budgie, or finding a new desktop environment altogether.

While I came into Linux too late to see the true schism between X11 and Wayland users, it does appear that other XDA writers are leaning toward the newer tech. For instance, one of our best Linux gurus ditched X11 in favor of Wayland, and another documented the Wayland quirks they stopped noticing after a couple of weeks.