> it breaks major features people need

I agree with your pain points. But the reality is that GNOME is already Wayland-only, KDE will be dropping the X11 session in 6.8, and GTK has deprecated X11 support, so going back isn't realistic.

> so the ecosystem became fragmented

The current fragmentation is frustrating, but Linux and Unix have gone through this exact phase before. Unix and especially Linux have never been static, they are more like living organisms. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, PC Unix suffered from the same growing pains. Multiple commercial and open-source X servers popped up for different hardware, until things eventually settled around X386 and XFree86. Even X developers in 1987 were saying "old window systems don't die" [0], sounds familiar?

We'll likely see compositors come and go, along with new protocols to address today's pain points. But the core protocol is here to stay, and wider adoption will naturally push the ecosystem toward shared solutions, just like we're seeing with River and wlroots. The fragmentation will fade over time.

In the meantime, anyone who still relies on X11 can simply stay on it until Wayland covers their use cases. Standalone X11 window managers aren't going away anytime soon.

Rather than dwelling on the friction, it's probably best to focus on what you can control: test software, file good bug reports, and help resolve the remaining edge cases.

I sympathize with the headache, but many Wayland developers came straight from X.org and know what they're doing. It's an uncomfortable adjustment period, but we'll get through it.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLPY8i_b-oM&t=1035s

user:	throwaway84934
created:	August 25, 2026
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