What is Wayland? A Beginner's Introduction for New Linux Users.  

I've started daily driving linux starting this year and haven't heard a more simple and clear explanation of how display servers work!

Commenting so I can see more of this on my feed!

i was searching for years for someone that can explain these technical terms in a non technical way thanks you so much

Very informative and clear presentation. Thank you!

Just a comment to pop this video up in the Recommended section :]

So simple and easy to understand. Julia, you are genius to explain complicated concepts, in an easy way.❤

For clarity, the server and client are abstract notions that apply to software, not hardware. The server and client may be run on the same machine or multiple machines. This means the server and client can run on the same machine. The server can also run on a remote, or networked, machine and this is the distinction. This means you can run the server (it is always software) on a networked machine and a client (also software) can run on a separate machine, utilizing a network of machines to transmit information between them.

Great simple video on Wayland an X11, like the charts and explanations, ur very gifted speaker, I really enjoyed ur explanations very simple and direct, that's a rarity on utube keep up the great work.

I'm pretty new to Linux and this description was very easy to understand. Thanks!

I just love how you can run a program on one computer and interact with it on another, or even on your tablet/phone

"Both are written in C" This is incorrect as Wayland is a standard, not an implementation like Weston, Mutter, etc. A Wayland compositor can be written in Rust like in Cosmic DE, can be compiled to web assembly like Greenfield, or any other Turing complete language as long as it complies to the standard.

Thanks for this content, subscribed

Given how wayland is supposed to be the new better thing that's supposed to fix all the x11 issues it really isn't thought through enough. Just look at how they abruptly had to pause new feature development to think about accessibility features because they clearly haven't thought about them and the way wayland is designed simply doesn't allow many accessibility features to work at least not in the initial design so they will have to make workarounds. Also adding new features can literally take multiple years because protocols have to be accepted by majority to be accepted. There's literally proposals for super basic desktop features that took 2 years to get accepted. Just a protocol not the implementation. And not to mention it's a protocol so every compositor has to reimplement everything. Yes there are libraries like wlroots but that still doesn't change the fact every compositor is completely independent and has different features and differing protocol versions. So you have one compositor implementing text input v2 but a different one implementing v1 and v3. This is the real situation and it makes things absolute PITA because you're trying to figure out why something doesn't work on one compositor when it works on another just to realize they don't implement the given protocol. So for the time being I'm simply not dealing with wayland. X11 despite it's shortcomings is still the king and will be for a while.

Thank you! That was short and sweet. Perfect! 👍🏻😎

Hi Julia! I like your style and decision to represent the exposed information in the process of revealing it by hand on paper. It triggers a different complex of perception mechanisms, even it looks the same as, for instance, animated version at first glance. Also the used conceptual approach to stick to the simplicity. Keep up the great work!

This is the best and simplest explanation of wayland I have come across. Thanks Julia.

Great explanation! Very nice breakdown of Wayland. Keep it up!

Good to have found this, better explanation than others out there

I think what often confuses users is that the X Windows system appears to throw the concept of client and server on its head. A server manages a resource, such as a printer. A client is a user, who through a the use of a software package, such as a word processor, wishes to use that resource. In the 1970s one would use a dumb terminal to run programs on a mainframe or mini computer, which manages the resources of CPU, memory and storage, ie a server. With a graphical workstation the resource, in this case the display/keyboard/mouse, is now local, and with X the client, a GUI software such as a word processor, could be on a remote machine. As you can now see, the concept of which is client, and which is server, depends on context, ie which resource you are talking about.

short, to the point and easy to understand. Thank you!

This helped me so much, thank you very much for making this easy to understand!

This is great content. Heard so much about Wayland especially via the Linux unplugged podcast, but really have not put my mind to checking it out further.

Thank you very much for explaining. Please keep up the good work.

Excellent video! It's makes me happy that content like this exists.

Wayland must support ssh protocol enabling to use application GUI of remote computer ( the way X supports for ssh -X ) ... and it's just one of the most basic features list missing in wayland The apprehension for Wayland is for being half baked and being pushed down the throat with arrogance ! But I highly appreciate your video which effectively explained basic difference in behind the scene operation of display manager ... my 💯 for your effort

Thank you for the explanation, and warm greetings from Brazil.

In my mind, the key difference between X11 and Wayland is that X11 was originally designed for "physical implementation" (0:50), albeit with client applications running on the "server" (mainframe) and the display server running on the client workstation (a "thin client"), whereas Wayland assumes the client applications and display server are on the same hardware (1:07). For most desktop users this allows Wayland to perform better, but it can't handle the case when they are not.

great video and it helped a lot. I have hearing issues and even with your accent i could understand you clearly. I hope Wayland provides a much faster and cleaner Desktop.. Windows 10 is buttery smooth and I want that in a Linux. Im learning on Fedora KDE because its given me the least problems.. of course NVIDIA is not helping. I really want Linux to be as good at Direct X or Vulkan (id prefer Vulkan) as Windows. Im a gamer. Windows 11 is looking to be a whole OS full of spyware and I dont want that.

Watching this on Wayland (I use Arch btw)

Great vid thx for the explanation. My friend asked me what Wayland was the other day and I struggled for an explanation. Ima send him this video 😎

Thanks for simple explanation

I'm ur 667th subscriber

Thank you for the video. Its on-point and interesting :)

awesome content, immediately subscribed ❤️

Thank you for the video! It's important to inform (new and old) Linux users of the actual improvements being made, and this video does a great job!

Thanks for explaining Wayland so well.

Gratefull is found this channel, nice introduction

thank you and looking forward to more videos like this hehe

Thanks for this great Video. Thanks for your work

Helped me understand, thank you!

While I loved the technical content, I especially appreciated the tone, the clarity, and the pace of the video. Thank you for your effort in educating me.

I came here to learn Wayland and ultimately actually I learned Ubuntu 24.10 for NVIDIA, that is stunning for me. Absolutely what I love to know.

Very good explanation, thank you!

I stopped by to understand Wayland. I subscribed and became your 1000th subscriber. Bragging rights, for us, both!

The algo brought me here and I liked it! I like your first-principles style of teaching (not surprised you’re a physics student), and appreciate the straightforward delivery without dumb memes and annoying background music. PS: usually it’s physics PhDs moving to finance, not vice versa, so you have done that backwards too! 😄

Loved the explanation. ❤

This was very informative and clear. Thank you for providing such quality content. PS: BTW this is just a tangent but you look really similar to my college professor

really nice explanation. great timing

Great explanation, more topics would be appreciated ✨

we need more ladies in linux 😭

Really good and simple explanation

I hope more applications support Wayland in the future

Good presentation!

Straightforward and informative, kudos! I use Arch btw. 😛

Well presented. Thank you. Tip: Purchase (or make) a light diffuser for your ring light.

Great content! Subscribed.

Brilliantly explained! Good that the video has appeared in my recommended. Maybe consider recording something about systemd and init :)

Thank you for this.

Its funny how some people saying that wayland is an outsider to the linux ecosystem and that thr x11 devs hate it Even tho x11 devs are the ones making wayland

Short and clear. When done!

Thank you

That was well explained!... If Wayland is the future and it eliminates the need for a separate window manager for a display server, does that mean it will eventually make all those window managers like Xfwm, KWin, IceWM, Compiz etc obsolete?.... Need more videos like these! Thanks!

Thanks Julia, well explained.

Great explanation, thank you.👍

Excellent.

0:19 It's no battle imho. Wayland is a development/transition of X to a newer, more modern and effective solution.

Very good explanation, it's the first time I get the difference 😅

Thanks❤

Thank you for clarifying what is x11 and Wayland and what does both programs do. I might came across some of those hiccups you mentioned. I tested Fedora 40 KDE and Manjaro KDE last month and had some trouble with my dual monitor setup and the painting application Krita. Krita became laggy and crush several times, which wasn't the case before with x11. But that could be a resolved with a patch or update of KRITA. The monitor situation is worse. In general both displays are mislabeled and in consequence of that, I had to mark the secondary monitor as primary to get the task bar on the correct monitor. After a reboot, the settings are gone and had to set back manually. Under x11 my Wacom Tablet works just fine and I just had to install a program for the GUI. It seems that this option is not in place under Wayland. I read about plans to create such a GUI, but that doesn't help right now. I know that you aren't responsible for this, I just wanted to point it out to your audience. Would be interesting to know if this is only a me-problem or does this issues affecting more people.

Wayland camp 💯

This was a very clear explanation. I use linux and watch some content about it, but I don't have much of a need to understand what is happening under the hood given how I use it (e.g., I have no idea if I'm using Wayland or X11 right now ;-). That said, having heard a lot about Wayland vs X11, it's nice to actually have some kind of understanding about what people are talking about.

I came here because I only knew Wayland is probably for killing X11 and I like to learn anything I should learn.

I've been with ubuntu exclusively since version 20 and have seen Wayland mentioned in tons of release notes off and on, scattered everywhere... and I'm a bit afraid (or ashamed) to admit that I never knew exactly what the heck it does, until now. Thank you!

This is good

Wayland def sounds like the way to go

This is great from a dev's standpoint, but accessibility is terrible so far in Wayland. It does not respect the need for screen readers to access window information consistently. Dark theme is not consistent in GTK apps, which is terrible for those of us who are light sensitive. And cursors and font sizes in Qt apps are way, way too small. These issues often require countless hours of workarounds on the part of the user. If the architecture of Wayland is so great, why can't the Wayland developers address some of these inter-app communication issues so we can fix accessibility consistently?

Thanks for the explanation. I don't know if Wayland is so nice. Lots of Distros provide rather X11 instead of Wayland and I read there are problems with Wayland. Maybe one likes an old well built workhorse better than the newest shiny car made out of plastic and which falls apart after 2 years. I installed yesterday KDE neon on my Dell SFF desktop (i3-9100, 24 GB RAM 2400 MT/s) and that came preinstalled with Wayland. I had nothing but trouble with crashing an thing called plasmashell. On Wayland I got about 50 plasmashell crashes. Annoying but it did not hinder the use of any App. I run Tuxedo OS on 3 other systems and no problem whatsoever. Tuxedo not even considers Wayland but is preinstalled with X11. Not a single problem now in 3 months on no system. So I figured this is not normal plasmashell crashes that often on KDE neon and I then restarted it with X11. Since X11 is standard now on KDE neon (all up to date), I had not a single crash of anything not even once plasmashell. So Wayland most likely is causing issues on Distros. Tuxedo allways tests all updates before releasing them and I realised they use allways X11 and an older version of Ubuntu kernel. I believe the KDE Plasma versions are the same between my KDE neon system and my other Tuxedo systems. KDE neon seems to provide the latest and greatest from Plasma and Ubuntu alike and Tuxedo is more conservative and provides a bit older versions in order to assure system stability and functionality. But now with X11 I had not a single hic up with my KDE neon system.

👍

Interesante

You mention Nvidia and wayland, are there times you would need to switch away from one or the other?

For me in the way that I understand it, Wayland is comparable to DirectX on Windows. It is a graphics API. You have a desktop environment in Linux, which would be something like KDE or gnome. But you've got to have a graphics platform to manage The 2D and 3D. That's where x11 or Wayland comes in. Wayland sucks though. It creates problems instead of solving them.

3:30 Is it possible that you're mixing up display managers (xdm, gdm, lightdm, sddm etc.) with window managers (kwin, compiz, fluxbox)? There's also desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, lxde, Enlightenment etc.). Of all those categories, some already work under Wayland or Xwayland. Some don't. Cheers!

pretty new to linux but so far most packages ive installed when given a choice usually have compatability issues with wayland, plus LXDE still uses X11 and so does everything else, im x11 for now simply because im tired of everything in linux taking 15 steps as is lol

Wayland IS the future... X11 devs are the one working on it, all the "battle" is meaningless.

New user since 1994. Still learning 😂

Wayland is not limited to C. Smithay, for example, uses Rust.

Thank you for pronouncing GNOME correctly. It itches the ol melon 🧠 when people say noam, seeing as G.N.O.M.E is an acronym.

What are your views on Flatpaks are they safe Flatpak vs AUR?!

when the system run, never touch. 😊

I never heard of it before. Thanks. I hear it has issues with Nvidia video cards.

The issue is with anydesk or TeamViewer etc

What are your views on thorium browser?

will old devices not supported by wayland?

I reccomend miro or sozi for these presentations

Why not improving X11 instead of building a complete different server. protocol, etc? So far my wayland experience was a nightmare and I had to go back to X11. "New" doesn't necessarilly mean "better"!

Can you suggest debian vs arch which to use?!

Saudações do Brasil minha cara. I use cachyos btw

There's no such thing as Wayland. It is just a protocol without a strong reference implementation. Every Wayland implementation is different and software that will run on one wayland won't run on another. The waylands are fragmenting linux even worse than it already was. All because IBM/Red Hat want something easier for the fleets to deploy.

How widely has Wayland been adopted?

Хотел узнать, когда же xmonad протирают на Weyland, но тема осталась не раскрыта 😂