X11 is singing its swan song. While some Linux distributions still rely on it, the major players are steadily moving toward replacing it with Wayland or even dropping X11 support entirely. Now, Fedora is also making clear moves in that direction.
That said, yesterday, Neal Gompa made a new proposal to remove every GNOME X11 package from the distribution’s repositories.
If the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) accepts the “Wayland-only GNOME” change for Fedora Linux 43 (scheduled for release in late October or early November), users who still log in to “GNOME on Xorg” will be transparently switched to the default GNOME Wayland session.
For GNOME developers, X11 has been on extended life support for quite a while. Upstream maintainers finished addressing the last user-experience blockers with GNOME 48 and plan to disable X11 at compile time in GNOME 49, with complete removal slated for GNOME 50.
So, Fedora’s proposal simply moves that schedule forward by one release, arguing that nobody upstream or downstream has the bandwidth to keep patching X11-specific breakages. Okay, what changes for users? In short:
- Seamless upgrade: Systems updated from earlier Fedora releases will boot straight into GNOME Wayland; the display manager (GDM) will no longer offer an X11 session.
- Legacy apps unaffected: X11-only applications will still run through Xwayland, so day-to-day software availability should not change.
- Fallback paths: Power users who truly need a native X11 desktop can switch to an alternative environment, such as Cinnamon or MATE, with a different login manager, like LightDM.
Moreover, the Fedora change mirrors the upstream strategy: GNOME maintainers introduced an “ENABLE_X11_SUPPORT” build flag in GNOME 48, which distributors can now disable entirely. In other words, keeping X11 alive on Fedora would soon require carrying extra patches—work the community is not eager to shoulder.
Just to be clear, this is still only a proposal for now, but all signs point to it being approved by FESCo, a key governing body within the Fedora Project that oversees various technical decisions related to the distro’s development.
In conclusion, Fedora 43 is shaping up to be an exciting release, with several changes on the way, including the introduction of the brand-new RPM 6 package manager. So, there’s a lot to look forward to.
