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A critical retrospective on Wayland after 17 years of development, arguing it has been a misallocation of resources that set the Linux desktop back. Key criticisms include: security restrictions that break common workflows (screen recording, copy-paste), unproven performance gains, fragmented protocol implementations leaving basic features like drag-and-drop in beta, and premature forced adoption by KDE and Red Hat before the ecosystem is ready. The author contrasts Wayland's slow 40-50% adoption over 17 years with PipeWire's near-complete audio replacement in ~8 years. Predictions include projects reverting to X11 and a new display protocol eventually displacing both.

Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years

The question is not whether Wayland is good or bad, the question is why people dropping X11 for Wayland? …and you have your answer to your question, it’s because X11 is stuck in the mud for the last two decades, full of security vulnerabilities and not really moving forward in any meaningful way.
And this happened because there were no other alternatives to X11 for a very long time, but if you want Linux to succeed on the desktop, you will want modern, performant, secure building blocks.
The author of the article is just frustrated that people decided to side-step X11s gatekeeping and chose an alternative.
Also, the title is clickbait.

I’ve been using Wayland exclusively since 2020, and it works just fine.
I don’t miss X11, and honestly I really don’t get these X11 die-hards.

<blockquote>
can’t copy-paste, and I can’t see window previews unless everything implements a specific extension to the core protocol.
</blockquote>
Lie and lie. I have sway and I can do both those things without issues
Only thing I discovered I’m not allowed is root GUI and I actually want this security fix

I am far from knowledgeable about the under the hood stuff, but Wayland has been fine for me in every day usage.