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.
However, it should be mentioned that the removal doesn’t mean X11 applications are dead—far from it. XWayland remains fully supported, serving as a compatibility layer that allows traditional X11 applications to run inside the Wayland session. For most users, this transition will be transparent.
According to devs, this change is a necessary evolution rather than a break. By retiring the X11 session, GNOME can focus entirely on advancing Wayland-based workflows—particularly around fractional scaling, HDR, color management, and input handling—all of which are now progressing faster without the need to maintain X11 code paths.
What are the practical implications for users and distributions? In short:
- If you rely on running GNOME under an Xorg/X11 session (i.e., not Wayland), this will likely become unsupported (or at least non-default) with GNOME 50. Distributions are already being prepared for that.
- If you use X11-only applications, you’ll still be okay via XWayland — the migration isn’t eliminating that compatibility layer.
- For extension authors, window managers, or tooling that assumed Xorg/X11 session support, now is the time to test Wayland compatibility (or plan fallback strategies).
At the end, let me put it this way: for GNOME, the future is Wayland—and with GNOME 50, that future is finally here.
Red Hat pushing their own NIH broken software, locking users into their narrative and removing choice. Same old.
I’m using wayland myself, although obviously not on Gnome as Mutter is way too buggy and unreliable (by far the worst compositor among all) but most people are still using X, as there are still too many workflows that rely on it (because of this or that important industrial-level app, and the wayland protocol is too broken to adapt to them).
It’s like closing all gas stations because 20% people drive electric or hybrid, this is exactly how you disrespect therefore alienate your users and ultimately lose momentum.
Which is what’s massively happening to Gnome right now, loss of market share and huge loss in popularity, it is basically becoming a 2nd tier DE. I’m not sure it’s still even worth relaying their software updates, as very few people are still interested in this outdated DE.