Mathias Clasen, leader of Fedora Desktop Team, participant Gnome Release Team and one of the active developers GTK (prepared 36.8% of the changes in GTK 4), began Discussion The possibility of stopping the support of the X11 protocol in the next significant GTK5 branch and leaving GTK operation in Linux only using the Wayland.
protocol.
The note to the proposal for the termination of the support of X11 states that “X11 is not better, and Wayland is already everywhere available.” It is further explained that the GTK-based X11 and the XLIB-based code are stagnated and experience problems with the accompanying. It is indicated that in order for the support of X11 to be preserved, someone must write and support the code associated with X11, but the enthusiasts are absent, and the existing GTK developers are concentrated mainly on supporting Wayland. The developers of systems interested in working in the environment on the basis of the X11 protocol can take support and extend its support in the GTK, but taking into account the current activity, the script that will find those who want to take support of the X11 backend in their hands are considered unlikely.
Currently, GTK is already positioning Wayland as the main platform for the development of functionality and API. Due to the lack of any activity on the development of the X11 protocol, when it is supported by its support in the GTK, the X11 will lead to an increasing lag in terms of new functionality available for developers, or will become an obstacle to the implementation of new opportunities in GTK.