1mo ago

GNOME Moves On: What the End of the X11 Session Means

linuxiac.com

20 comments

As typical, GNOME has a tendency to drop support to older software before the newer one is ready. I'm glad that I dumped it in 3.0 times.
- They are essentially doing the same as KDE, whose statement was linked in the article.
  KDE
  For now, the Plasma X11 session remains in maintenance mode. That means critical issues—like login failures or major regressions—will still be addressed. However, minor bugs are unlikely to get fixes unless funded, and new X11-specific features are off the table entirely.
  VS
  Gnome
  First things first: Xorg isn’t being abandoned outright. It remains maintained and is receiving necessary security patches and bug fixes. However, active development has effectively halted, with most of its original contributors now focused on Wayland.
  Edit - added Gnome quote effectively saying the same thing.
  
  Even here the KDE communication is better on details. the gnome quote is less crisp on what it means by "active development" where as KDE precisely defines what will and will not be supported
  
  Odds are they're doing the same thing only in theory. In practice, the picture changes - typically the KDE devs are far more willing to maintain old and marginal features and/or support benefiting only a small chunk of the userbase. While the GNOME devs are way more likely to ditch it, babble something about their design vision, then try to convince the user "ackshyually you don't need it".
  (A major exception is perhaps accessibility, mentioned in the text. It isn't just the Wayland devs worried about it, but also the KDE and GNOME devs. In this regard props to all three.)
  
  Gnome and KDE are not doing the same thing.
  KDE will continue to offer an X11 session for the time being:
  Current status: Plasma’s X11 session continues to be maintained.
  https://pointieststick.com/2025/06/21/about-plasmas-x11-session/
  Gnome will disable the X11 session in the next release and then remove the code:
  The most likely scenario is that all the X11 session code stays disabled by default for 49 with a planned removal for GNOME 50.
  https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2025/06/08/the-x11-session-removal/
- For someone who has not used Gnome in 14+ years you sure seem to know a lot about it...
  X11 has effectively already been deprecated for years, seeing little to no development on it. No one should be surprised.
  And still, there are SEVERAL Long Term Support distros out there that will support X11 for the coming years. Please stop pretending that stuff will start breaking. It will not.
  
  X11 has effectively already been deprecated for years, seeing little to no development on it. No one should be surprised.
  X11 is complete.
  Wayland is incomplete, and is missing essential features like accessibility and automation (ydotool will never have half the features xdotool has).
  
  For someone who has not used Gnome in 14+ years you sure seem to know a lot about it…
  I ditched GNOME in 3.0 times. And I still gave it a second try, a third, even a fourth. And my system has GNOME (and KDE, and Xfce...) applications, so certain patterns are visible even in everyday usage. And I fuck around with virtual machines to find out about random stuff, including DEs that I ditched (like GNOME and KDE) or I never used directly in my machine (like Elementary).
  So don't assume "ditched it = ignorant about it".
  X11 has effectively already been deprecated for years, seeing little to no development on it.
  O rly. And the point still stands: GNOME has a tendency to drop support to older software before the newer one is ready.
  Unless you want to claim Wayland reached parity with X11, and there's totally no reason people might want to stick with X11 instead.
  And still, there are SEVERAL Long Term Support distros out there that will support X11 for the coming years.
  This does not address what I said.
  Please stop pretending that stuff will start breaking. It will not.
  That is not what I said.
  Yawn Given that
  I have little to no patience towards people who distort what others say and vomit assumptions; and
  Others might come up with something actually meaningful to contradict what I said,
  It's safe to disregard you as meaningless noise, so I ain't wasting my time further with you.
  [inb4 people discussing the semantics of "ditch"]
It means some of your old software will stop working and if you file a bug report they'll tell you to contact the developers who either haven't touched it in two decades or have since died.
Obvious opining happening in the comments.
I still run X.org, because so far I had no reason to change. I don't like GNOME's power over GTK and therefore most Linux GUI software. I don't like GNOME's disregard for backward compatibility.
But the fact remains: unless I go out of my way to avoid such software, the switch to wayland is now on my horizon.
Thanks for reporting this.
Thank god I'm sensible enough to not use gnome.

20 comments