X11 Vs Wayland - Should You Switch?

Date First Published: 15th August 2026

X11 and Wayland are both local display servers for Linux, which run on your computer to draw windows and handle mouse and inputs on your screen. X11 is old and stable. Wayland is new, fast, and smooth. In this video, we will compare both options to help you decide if you should switch today.

Which Display Servers Do Linux Distributions Use?

Major Linux distributions and core desktop projects have shifted to Wayland as the default display server. Fedora and Ubuntu use Wayland by default for standard GNOME and KDE sessions. Debian comes with Wayland by default for its GNOME desktop environment and Linux Mint traditionally stayed on X11, but its Cinnamon desktop has experimented with Wayland support for upcoming releases while keeping X11 options available.

MX Linux and Debian provide easy access to X11 sessions at login. XFCE and LXQT still rely heavily on X11, but GNOME and KDE Plasma have scheduled the complete removal of their native X11 backends. Both environments still run legacy X11 apps via the XWayland compatibility layer, but native X11 desktop sessions are disappearing. GNOME disabled X11 by default in GNOME 49 and completely removed the X11 backend code. KDE Plasma has announced plans to officially drop native X11 desktop sessions starting with KDE Plasma 6.8, making Wayland the exclusive display server protocol. Support for the Plasma X11 session continues through early 2027, and individual KDE apps will still run on X11 and via Xwayland. XFCE developers are actively building experimental Wayland components and a native Wayland compositor, but X11 remains the core, fully supported production environment.

Performance

Wayland generally provides better performance, lower latency, and smoother visuals than X11. Because Wayland talks directly to the graphics hardware, it eliminates the middleman architecture of the X server, allowing compositors to render directly to the screen without unnecessary context switching. It has built-in V Sync, which eliminates screen tearing without needing extra configuration. It also smoothly manages refresh rates and scaling for different screens, but X11 often stutters.

Wayland generally consumes less RAM because its codebase and protocol are much leaner and free of 40 years of accumulated X11 extensions, but the total memory consumption depends on which desktop environment and compositor you use. Raw idle benchmarks show that a basic, non-composited X11 setup can use slightly less idle CPU power than a Wayland compositor. However, modern X11 environments require an external compositor for transparency and effects, bringing its resource usage close to or higher than Wayland's.

Compatibility

Wayland has nearly universal app compatibility because legacy X11 applications run through a compatibility layer called X Wayland. Because Wayland isolates applications for security reasons, apps, like screen recorders, that require access to your whole screen require updates to use modern desktop portals instead.

Wayland intentionally cuts off features that X11 allows by default. This creates specific differences for certain app types. Apps like OBS Studio use a secure multimedia framework called PipeWire to ask for permission. Many traditional screen recorders fail on Wayland because Wayland isolates application windows for better security, blocking X11 capture methods. Apps, like Kazam and Simple Screen Recorder haven't been updated to support Wayland protocols, like PipeWire. They rely on X11 specific features to capture screen pixels and track inputs. This results in a completely black screen recording. To use these screen recorders, you can log out of your desktop environment and switch your session from Wayland to X11. However, the latest versions of GNOME and KDE Plasma are removing support for X11 desktop sessions, so you will need to use alternatives, like the built-in GNOME screen recorder or Spectacle on KDE Plasma.

Security

Wayland is much more secure than X11. X11 shares all window and input data globally, meaning any app can read keystrokes or record your screen. The X11 architecture was designed in 1984 for trustworthy networks of thin clients. It lacks modern sandbox protections, leaving it vulnerable to a malicious script or unprivileged background program that can log passwords typed into your web browser or terminal and background processes that can capture the content of other windows, enabling silent data theft of banking info, emails, or private documents.

With X11, a malicious program can wait for you to open a terminal with root privileges, inject automated keystrokes into that window, and run commands as an administrator. Wayland isolates apps using a compositor, requiring explicit user consent for actions like screen sharing.

The security differences between the two protocols stems from how their architectures root input events and manage display buffers. With X11, it sends all keystrokes and clicks to the central X Server, so any app can read or modify data from another app, record the screen, or take screenshots. With Wayland, it only passes input directly to the focused application window, apps cannot interact with or see other apps without their permission, and it requests explicit user permission by system portals.

Gaming Performance

In modern gaming setups using Vulkan or DirectX 12 via Proton, average frame rates between X11 and Wayland perform nearly identical, usually within a 1 to 2% difference of each other for most games. However, benchmarks on desktop environments like GNOME and KDE Plasma show Wayland taking the lead and resulting in efficiency improvements. Even when frame rates are identical, Wayland feels smoother. It bypasses the central display server overhead, reducing micro-stutters and eliminating the horizontal screen tearing native to X11. It also provides better frame pacing and native Vsync, meaning games often feel smoother even if the raw counter matches X11.

It provides a smoother visual experience because its modern architecture eliminates screen tearing and handles mixed-refresh-rate multi-monitor setups much better. X11 often struggles heavily if you run monitors with different refresh rates, like a gaming screen refreshing at 144 times per second next to a standard side monitor refreshing the image 60 times per second, often dragging the faster monitor down or causing stuttering.

Should You Switch To Wayland?

If you're using the GNOME or KDE plasma desktop with Intel or AMD graphics, we would recommend switching to Wayland because it offers better performance, improved security, and better multi-monitor scaling. If you rely on older software or screen-recording tools that require X11 or don't run very well through Wayland, then you might want to wait. Both the XFCE and LXQT desktop environments still rely heavily on the X11 display server. XFCE and LXQT have only started adding experimental Wayland sessions, so a full transition to Wayland on these desktop environments is not yet stable and you may experience bugs or broken window placements. Until a stable release arrives, it's best to stick to X11 on XFCE or LXQT.

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