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The Canonical Desktop Team have announced that starting with Ubuntu 25.10, they're going all-in with GNOME on Wayland.

In a post on the official Discourse Forum from developer Jean Baptiste Lallement, they stated that with Ubuntu 25.10 they are "taking a significant step forward in the evolution of the Ubuntu Desktop by removing the Xorg-based Ubuntu session" and so it will be exclusively Wayland. Why? They said the decision "follows upstream GNOME’s roadmap and aligns with our long-term strategy of delivering a secure, performant, and modern desktop experience".

And the fact is, Wayland is the future and the more distributions that force it by default, the quicker the Linux world can move on and continue improving.

Since Ubuntu 25.10 is the last interim release before the next LTS (long-term support) with Ubuntu 26.04 next year, this move makes sense. It means they can smoothen any rough edges by the time the LTS releases.

See more in their forum post.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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20 comments Subscribe

Doktor-Mandrake 3 days ago
My ubuntu machine I have hooked up to a vga 1280x768 monitor but on anything other then gnome or ubuntu on xorg I get "out of range" on the monitor

Really need to figure out why that is if its going to become a problem

If anyone can elaborate for me, that the 'gnome' option on the login screen is gnome on wayland and should be fine for future OS upgrades?


Last edited by Doktor-Mandrake on 10 Jun 2025 at 5:11 pm UTC
mr-victory 3 days ago
GNOME = GNOME on wayland
torham 3 days ago
> And the fact is, Wayland is the future and the more distributions that force it by default, the quicker the Linux world can move on and continue improving.

This may be true, but it's on the backs of the users. I can't convince anyone to use Linux if the experience isn't 100% seamless. Not everybody wants to be the beta test stuff for the good of the Wayland developers. So I hope this it is working perfectly for everyone, otherwise we just bleed more potential users.
mrdeathjr 3 days ago
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https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/ubuntu-25-10-goes-all-in-with-wayland-dropping-support-for-gnome-on-xorg/?comment_id=279701

In my case stay waiting for next cycle on xubuntu but for 28.04 wayland must be stay in better form (before and this year seems show more work)

On wine in my case need resolve various issues related with input

emoji
Doktor-Mandrake 3 days ago
Being seamless is definitely important, though wayland does seem pretty stable at this point?

I'm in a situation at the moment where my dad, who is in his 70s, has an old laptop

Windows 10 dropping support and tbh it runs awful on his laptop ANYWAY, when I tried linux mint on a usb drive it was night and day difference

He bought an ssd that I want to install linux on but I do worry about any issues he'll have at his age and I won't be around to help him troubleshoot

I'm going to put mint on it over ubuntu as it's alot better in terms of ease of use and stability imo
Penguin 3 days ago
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I'm curious to see how Canonical will handle flavors like Xubuntu and Ubuntu Mate (among others), who aren't ready for Wayland. Only time will tell.

Edit: I just read that flavors are not affected, thankfully emoji


Last edited by Penguin on 11 Jun 2025 at 6:21 am UTC
RFSharpe 3 days ago
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I'm going to put mint on it over ubuntu as it's alot better in terms of ease of use and stability imo
Not a fan of Wayland. I have had to reinstall Linux on two different machines because of problems that appeared to be related to video issues. My current work desktop is Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS. End of life for 22.04.5 LTS is April 2027. At this point in time, I am planning on installing Mint also.
ShabbyX 3 days ago
Being seamless is definitely important, though wayland does seem pretty stable at this point?

I'm in a situation at the moment where my dad, who is in his 70s, has an old laptop

Windows 10 dropping support and tbh it runs awful on his laptop ANYWAY, when I tried linux mint on a usb drive it was night and day difference

He bought an ssd that I want to install linux on but I do worry about any issues he'll have at his age and I won't be around to help him troubleshoot

I'm going to put mint on it over ubuntu as it's alot better in terms of ease of use and stability imo

Did that with my father-in-law (Ubuntu). Went from calling us every week with something broken in windows to... we haven't heard from him in 5 years (just kidding, we see him all the time, just no computer issues anymore)


Last edited by ShabbyX on 10 Jun 2025 at 9:15 pm UTC
Lib-Inst 2 days ago
waylands sucks and it will never be the future. people have been saying that forever and it still isnt.
pleasereadthemanual 2 days ago
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This is surprising. But I think most people will have fewer issues with Wayland than X11. People who try Mint tend to run into fundamental limitations of X11 and otherwise issues that don't exist on Wayland.

Not that Wayland doesn't have its issues, but compared to X11, they're actually being fixed.

Neither is a great experience right now, though Wayland has been better for me.
Creak 2 days ago
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I'm on Fedora which defaulted to Wayland for a few years now and it was nice before, it is perfect now.

The only time I had issue was when I had to install proprietary software to be able to work with a Windows machine for my job.

But at the time, both Wayland and XWayland were still "young". I'm sure these edge cases are much better now.

BTW, Ubuntu removes Wayland, but keeps XWayland, so software relying solely on X11 will still work. Just through the XWayland layer.


Last edited by Creak on 11 Jun 2025 at 3:43 am UTC
dubigrasu 2 days ago
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Using both, alternatively for the moment. X because that's where everything (still) works and Wayland because eventually I have to get used with it and its quirks.
I think Wayland is in pretty good shape now, the one thing that still doesn't work (and probably will not work for a long while) is mouse cursor shown when using the Steam Controller. Which is practically a game breaker, since I use SC for everything (game related). There are several workarounds but none satisfactory, so at the moment I mostly use Wayland, but when I'm gaming I'm back on X.
Ehvis a day ago
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For that to work for me, all my use cases need to work properly. I have no doubt that normal desktop stuff will be fine, but games/steam/proton/wine needs to be good. VR needs to work properly. And GSYNC needs to work properly as well (in games, don't care about desktop). Haven't tried recently, so I'm not too sure what the state is.
R Daneel Olivaw a day ago
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@lib-inst "waylands sucks and it will never be the future. people have been saying that forever and it still isnt."

LOL.... Reality sucks right?

No matter what people want to think because they're still so stuck in the past, wayland definitely 100% is the future, and guess what, you don't need "feelings" and "thoughts" about anything whatsoever. Reality is reality. All the major distros are going to a wayland-only future.

If you don't like it ... hate it for ya.
Caldathras a day ago
The Mint Team is working on the Cinnamon Desktop to prepare it for Wayland. The laptop I game with is on Linux Mint XFCE Edition. I am not fussed about Wayland support. I also have confidence that when the XFCE team is ready to move the XFCE desktop to Wayland, it will be rock-solid stable.

I haven't experienced any issues gaming on X11. I don't imagine I'll experience any issues with Wayland either, once I get around to trying it. For me, X11 is stable and that's all that matters to me.

I guess I just don't utilize the features that cause so many others distress. I'm not polarized for or against either X11 or Wayland. For now X11 serves my purposes and some time in the future, Wayland will replace it. I'm good either way.
Kirtai a day ago
Still waiting for decent graphics tablet and colourspace support in Wayland.
F.Ultra a day ago
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Still waiting for decent graphics tablet and colourspace support in Wayland.
colorspace support (far more advanced than what x11 ever could muster) have been in Wayland for a while now.
Doktor-Mandrake a day ago
I've dug out an old dp to vga adapter I had, which helped me get around the fact wayland doesnt play nice with analogue signal

I've also switched to wayland experimental on linux mint cinnamon just to see how the experience goes, and this is on my partners old uni laptop with very modest specs (dual core, i5-5200u 2.20ghz) so it will be interesting to see how bad the overhead is with xwayland

It's a shame they're ditching x11 support, for someone like myself the favourite thing about linux is bringing new life into old hw. Hw prices are going up and its important people can still make sure of older hw!

Suppose there's always things like xubuntu to fall back on, but as it stands the main debian distros run great on extremely modest hw at the moment.
RavenWings 23 hours ago
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I just recently switched from Windows to Linux (Kubuntu) and my personal experience: I kept running into countless problems with gaming. I was able to solve some, found half-baked workarounds for many others and gave up on the rest when I realised that simply switching to X11 solves all of them at once.

Im sure Wayland has many upsides and will have a bright future, but for now its X11 for me.
Caldathras 18 hours ago
@Doktor-Mandrake
It's a shame they're ditching x11 support, for someone like myself the favourite thing about linux is bringing new life into old hw. Hw prices are going up and its important people can still make sure of older hw!
I'm easy going about the whole X11/Wayland thing but I'm with you on the old hardware. I haven't purchased a brand new computer in over 15 years. Just like my automobiles, I prefer to get my computers from the used market (definitely not as old as I might for a vehicle though). Someone else pays the premium and I get it after they're done with it!
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