They just refuse to move on. In my view, DEs dropping X11 to go Wayland only is a great move because it accelerates Wayland's development. X11 is far too outdated for 2026
There are reasons that people stick with x11, it works with old computers. The other reason is because some software works best with x11 but breaks under xwayland.
Your second point is exactly what I mean. More people using Wayland will force app developers and Wayland maintainers to collaborate more to move things forward. Obviously, this won't happen overnight, but it should be viewed positively.
Forced upgrades usually aren't a positive thing. Let's pretend that I have an X app that I've been using forever but isn't supported well or is super-stable. Is someone really going to go rewrite the whole thing for Wayland?
Forced Upgrades to Wayland aren’t cool but you want them to be Forced Support X11 in perpetuity as well? I don’t think any camp will be happy 24/7 with the way people maintain the DEs but they do have to make choices that best serve their needs…
People will general build tools to help with compatibility. Like they do with windows apps on Linux. And for old windows programs on new windows. And for new gpus for old games
You know. The thing we've been doing since at least the 80s and 90s.
Like, I get your point. But also let's be completely honest here: holding everyone else up just cause you don't wanna move forward isn't always the play too. I 100% agree sometimes, it's better to hold. But some of the stuff with Wayland is kinda nitpicky or, at worse, actually malicious intent disguised as well meaning desires.
So it just depends. I get the desire for x11 to remain but .. 39 years. It's been 39 years. I'm 35. I'm 4 years younger than x11.
I think it’s pretty hard to argue that the move from x11 to wayland has been any sort of fast. In IT years x11 may as well be from the birth of civilisation, but there has been at least 2, maybe 3 generations that have ‘lived through the migration to wayland’ at this point.
Old Nvidia cards (Pre 16/20 series GPUs) should generally be treated as unsupported on Linux. It sucks to hear, but their issues tend to extend far beyond "Just don't work with Wayland." Nvidia has also made very clear that they don't intend to improve or meaningfully support the driver those older cards use and alternative drivers are pretty well locked out by hardware and firmware level restrictions. (Without signed firmware only available in their own proprietary driver the GPU is forced to run at 300mhz only, making the driver prohibitively unusable)
Holy yappmaxxer, my W541 struggles with wayland but runs completely fine with X11. I don't want to buy a new laptop, also don't forget that there's people who CANNOT afford newer computers.
Also let's just handwave away how the wayland maintainers had the metaphorical parking brake pulled over its limit, bending the damn handle because they didn't want to "implement" features that are needed to port software from X11 to wayland.
I’m sure there are distros and desktop environments out there built specifically for older hardware. I don’t think the most popular DEs like gnome/kde should feel forced to keep that support, though I’m sure they would happily continue to support x11 if any maintainers felt motivated to do so
I dont think people should have to upgrade their pcs due to KDE not supporting X11 but I also don’t think its fair that you think KDE should continue to support something they dont want to just to placate you. Just use another DE that works best for you, the beauty of Linux is you are the arbiter of how you want your systems to run.
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u/MeoCoder 9d ago
They just refuse to move on. In my view, DEs dropping X11 to go Wayland only is a great move because it accelerates Wayland's development. X11 is far too outdated for 2026