I used to use some features that only worked on x11. Slowly I found alternatives or workarounds on wayland. So I understand the sentiment. Imagine you book an uber but it’s electric so they say you can’t book a ride that’s too long
I love your metaphor because it is exactly the kind of pedantry that is usually at play with X11 vs Wayland.
“I can’t take an electric uber because it has an effective range less than 400 miles!”
Who the fuck takes a uber to a destination over 4 hours away?
A normal person rents a car, takes a bus, catches a train or buys a plane ticket. Ain’t no one faring a uber for a long trip to another city. But that’s exactly the kind of complaints from people obsessively clinging to X11. They have a hyper specific use case or workflow that almost no one else uses.
I understand and agree. Anyone who has a super specific use case that means they still use X11, go ahead, no one is stopping them. But to complain or trash Wayland on that basis is asinine. Every single change in paradigm breaks someone’s workflow, that’s impossible to avoid. But the responsible thing to do is to adapt either with new tools and resources, or with a slight change in workflow. They act like people are taking away their toy, when in reality it is just adding to the pile of available toys. But they are upset because their toy is old and won’t get repaired anymore, while the new toy is slightly different but a bit easier to clean and repair, so they get upset at the other kids for playing with it. Ignoring that the new toy doesn’t make the old toy disappear.
I had a friend who collected CRTs and VHS players right at the turn from DVD to bluray. He didn’t argue to kill LCDs, HD video or CDs. He didn’t wrote to Sony to complain that he couldn’t find VHS on Walmart anymore or that his hyper specific CC format didn’t work on DVD the exact same way it did on VHS. He accepted that tech culture shifted and that to keep his hobby up he had to take up a lot of the upfront work of maintaining old tech alive. He learned to repair old CRTs and VHSs and keeps them running for libraries. Even collaborating to digitize particularly niche historical content.
I used to use some features that only worked on x11. Slowly I found alternatives or workarounds on wayland. So I understand the sentiment. Imagine you book an uber but it’s electric so they say you can’t book a ride that’s too long
I love your metaphor because it is exactly the kind of pedantry that is usually at play with X11 vs Wayland.
“I can’t take an electric uber because it has an effective range less than 400 miles!”
Who the fuck takes a uber to a destination over 4 hours away?
A normal person rents a car, takes a bus, catches a train or buys a plane ticket. Ain’t no one faring a uber for a long trip to another city. But that’s exactly the kind of complaints from people obsessively clinging to X11. They have a hyper specific use case or workflow that almost no one else uses.
Or maybe they’re developers that are tired of the wheel being reimplemented?
Eg.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/wayland-screenshots/
Every single person has different problems and priorities, and until hyper specific use cases/workflows work on Wayland, many will stay on Xorg.
I understand and agree. Anyone who has a super specific use case that means they still use X11, go ahead, no one is stopping them. But to complain or trash Wayland on that basis is asinine. Every single change in paradigm breaks someone’s workflow, that’s impossible to avoid. But the responsible thing to do is to adapt either with new tools and resources, or with a slight change in workflow. They act like people are taking away their toy, when in reality it is just adding to the pile of available toys. But they are upset because their toy is old and won’t get repaired anymore, while the new toy is slightly different but a bit easier to clean and repair, so they get upset at the other kids for playing with it. Ignoring that the new toy doesn’t make the old toy disappear.
The problem is many distros are going to stop shipping Xorg, because it is “not needed” anymore.
That’s where the adapt part comes in.
I had a friend who collected CRTs and VHS players right at the turn from DVD to bluray. He didn’t argue to kill LCDs, HD video or CDs. He didn’t wrote to Sony to complain that he couldn’t find VHS on Walmart anymore or that his hyper specific CC format didn’t work on DVD the exact same way it did on VHS. He accepted that tech culture shifted and that to keep his hobby up he had to take up a lot of the upfront work of maintaining old tech alive. He learned to repair old CRTs and VHSs and keeps them running for libraries. Even collaborating to digitize particularly niche historical content.