Fedora 40 is gearing up to make some significant changes that could reshape the user experience. Last week we reported that Fedora 40 proposing to drop the X11 session for KDE Plasma.
In a parallel development, the Fedora team are engaged in discussions about dropping the X11 session for GNOME as well i.e. for the Fedora Workstation edition. This move mirrors the commitment to Wayland’s advantages and the realization that maintaining an X11 session entails an unnecessary resource burden. The consensus among Fedora developers is that Wayland has matured considerably and has become the default session for a good reason.
The discussion regarding GNOME’s potential shift away from X11 is a significant step forward. However, it’s important to note that this proposal is still awaiting action from the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo). This means that while the desire for change is apparent, additional steps and considerations exist before it becomes a reality.
One of the critical challenges in this transition is ensuring that all the upstream GNOME components can be compiled without X11 session support. Currently, some essential functions still require X11, such as compiling, restarting, and launching mutter and gnome-session under Wayland. This dependency needs to be addressed and resolved before the proposal can progress further.
Embracing Wayland promises efficiency and modernity, making Fedora a more competitive choice for Linux users. But it may come as a problem for older hardware running Fedora. For example, a five-year-old NVIDIA laptop may work well with X11 Fedora GNOME Session but it may not work with only the Wayland option.
You may think that there are other distributions which offer more stable and LTS support such as Debian. But there are many users who use the Fedora workstation as a go-to distribution for hundreds of use cases.
While the discussion is ongoing, it’s clear that the Linux community is eager to streamline and optimize the user experience, and Fedora 40 may well be at the forefront of this exciting transition. Do remember that this is yet to be submitted as a proposal & approved. It’s currently under discussion.
Via Phoronix & Pagure discussion
Feature image: wallpaperflare.com
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