Major distros are soon switching to versions of desktop environments that use Wayland instead of X11. This is a bad state of affairs for accessibility.
At this point Wayland is basically “winning” because of sunk cost. Just because X11 is the wrong answer doesn’t make Wayland the right one.
We could stop and say “here’s what we learned was problematic from both X11 and Wayland and how people actually use computers in 2025, how would we solve these problems knowing that?” But then we’d have to start again from square 1, and nobody with the clout to make it happen is pushing for that.
the infuriating thing is I’m on wayland because I have to be on wayland but given the option I would use x11 simply because the choices for WM’s are better and overall I prefer x11 even though I know it’s “dying”.
The problem is on my specific main laptop which I use for work and everything it’s a dual amd/nvidia GPUs. Nvidia being the main GPU and AMD being secondary. x11 does NOT like this at all. So some programs will completely crash out if left unfocused for more than 2minutes. i.e. i’m testing something and need to move away from that workspace and if I go back the thing is graphically unresponsive. on Wayland it’s not an issue. Gaming on x11? forget about it, it’s a no go.
Now there are things on Wayland that just infuriate me. For example Discord. If i’m on a call with someone on discord I HAVE to keep that discord workspace active otherwise I can’t use the keybinds to push to talk or anything. on x11? not an issue. So i’m constantly having to switch my WM’s from a wayland one to an x11 one for the dumbest reasons.
Well, in this case there was literally one standard, X11, in use since the late 80s. Now we have two, and the new one makes my mouse disappear when it hovers over any sort of map in firefox.
The problems with Wayland are not inherent to Wayland. They are a lack of features that could be added to Wayland without any particular technical difficulty. The problem is that the major players behind Wayland do want many of those features to exist. A second issue is that the standardization process for new Wayland features is slow at best.
None of these issues are helped by replacing Wayland.
At this point Wayland is basically “winning” because of sunk cost. Just because X11 is the wrong answer doesn’t make Wayland the right one.
We could stop and say “here’s what we learned was problematic from both X11 and Wayland and how people actually use computers in 2025, how would we solve these problems knowing that?” But then we’d have to start again from square 1, and nobody with the clout to make it happen is pushing for that.
the infuriating thing is I’m on wayland because I have to be on wayland but given the option I would use x11 simply because the choices for WM’s are better and overall I prefer x11 even though I know it’s “dying”.
The problem is on my specific main laptop which I use for work and everything it’s a dual amd/nvidia GPUs. Nvidia being the main GPU and AMD being secondary. x11 does NOT like this at all. So some programs will completely crash out if left unfocused for more than 2minutes. i.e. i’m testing something and need to move away from that workspace and if I go back the thing is graphically unresponsive. on Wayland it’s not an issue. Gaming on x11? forget about it, it’s a no go.
Now there are things on Wayland that just infuriate me. For example Discord. If i’m on a call with someone on discord I HAVE to keep that discord workspace active otherwise I can’t use the keybinds to push to talk or anything. on x11? not an issue. So i’m constantly having to switch my WM’s from a wayland one to an x11 one for the dumbest reasons.
Well, in this case there was literally one standard, X11, in use since the late 80s. Now we have two, and the new one makes my mouse disappear when it hovers over any sort of map in firefox.
The problems with Wayland are not inherent to Wayland. They are a lack of features that could be added to Wayland without any particular technical difficulty. The problem is that the major players behind Wayland do want many of those features to exist. A second issue is that the standardization process for new Wayland features is slow at best.
None of these issues are helped by replacing Wayland.