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ELI5 the whole Wayland vs X11 going on.

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  • X/X11 is a client-server protocol from the age of 10Mbps networks, intended for a bunch of "dumb terminals" connected to a mainframe that runs the apps, with several "optimizations" that over time have become useless cruft.

    Wayland is a local machine display system, intended for computers capable of running apps on the same machine as the display (aka: about everything for the past 30 years).

    Nowadays, it makes more sense to have a Wayland system (with some RDP app if needed), than an X11 system with a bunch of hacks and cruft that only makes everything slower and harder to maintain. An X11 server app acting as a "dumb terminal", can still be run on a Wayland system to display X11 client apps if needed.

    • RDP is not a replacement for individual remote apps, btw, just saying. RDP is a full remote desktop, like VNC.

109 comments