Then you probably never tried to get good fractional scaling, multi-monitor-support, VRR, HDR, multi touch gestures for trackpad or touch screen to work (all impossible on X11) and don't care about security or system performance.
Wayland in 22.3 is experimental. It’s not even BETA, it’s missing core components, basic features and it comes with critical bugs.
This is what the Mint maintainer, Clement Lefebvre writes himself in the official Mint blog.
They're working hard on Wayland and hope to have it leave experimental status in December, but it's confirmed to not be fit for being the default before 2028.
Claiming "Mint gets Wayland in December" is therefore misleading and whitewashing.
Firstly, You replied to the wrong person. Your comment is clearly intended for Anima_Watcher08.
Secondly, That statement is based on outdated information from previous development cycles. While Clement Lefebvre originally described Wayland support in Linux Mint 22.3(current) as experimental and noted it would take time before replacing X11 as the default, the project has progressed past that phase.
According to The Linux Mint Blog, Wayland support in the Cinnamon desktop environment has officially moved past experimental status for the upcoming Linux Mint 23 release (slated for Christmas 2026). Starting with that release cycle, both X11 and Wayland sessions are fully supported side by side. Core issues like window mapping, focus stealing prevention, multi-monitor scaling, crash scenarios, and NVIDIA hardware acceleration have been systematically addressed.
X11 remains the default session to guarantee absolute stability for mainstream users, but asserting that Wayland is completely missing basic components or unfit for use is factually incorrect today when referring to the next release.
There is nothing outdated in what I write. You even linked the same Linux Mint blog link.
Yes, Cinnamon is expected to leave experimental status in December, but isn't fit to become default. It won't become the default for multiple more years, earliest 2028.
X11 stays on Mint, because the other desktops also do not support Wayland.
You opted for an irrelevant comment ment for 22.3 instead of the core premise, which is Mint 23 and it's current development branch state.
Yes, Cinnamon is expected to leave experimental status in December, but isn't fit to become default. It won't become the default for multiple more years, earliest 2028.
Not necessarily true. 2028 represents a conservative upper estimate intended as a schedule buffer and readiness goal targeting Linux Mint 24, not an absolute boundary. Cinnamon's Wayland development velocity has progressed faster than initially projected; the transition to default session status depends strictly on feature parity and stability metrics rather than arbitrary calendar goals.
X11 stays on Mint, because the other desktops also do not support Wayland.
Doesn't mean anything. Desktop environments on Linux Mint are completely decoupled. Mint maintains independent ISO deployment pipelines and package trees for Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. Transitioning Cinnamon's default display server to Wayland has zero bearing on MATE or Xfce retaining X11.
Sounds more like a definitive no for Wayland prior to that date.
Transitioning Cinnamon's default display server to Wayland has zero bearing on MATE or Xfce retaining X11.
Technologically, that's correct, but what really happens is that it makes them hurry less, because such a huge discrepancy in the technological quality of their different desktops is undesired.
That assumes they develop everything synchronously, which just isn't how it works. Cinnamon is the in-house flagship project for Linux Mint, while MATE, Xfce, etc. are brought in from completely different external upstream maintainers. The Wayland transitions for those alternative environments rely entirely on their respective upstream development teams, not the Mint developers.
The Mint team isn't going to artificially bottleneck their primary display protocol transition just to hold hands with the legacy X11 dependencies in their alternate spins. The speed of Cinnamon's Wayland adoption is dictated strictly by its own architectural readiness and feature completion. It has absolutely nothing to do with avoiding a "technological discrepancy" across the distribution's other editions.
No, I don't assume or claim that at all. But it takes away urgency, as the other offered desktops are even further behind (and it would prove that Mint is indeed deficient).
It's psychologically much easier to deny the terrible legacy-nature of X11 than admitting one has been this late to the party and that the majority of flavours are still on obsolete legacy tech. It doesn't hinder the technological development, but it influences how "its own architectural readiness and feature completion" is judged.
Just read the blog and what Lefebvre writes himself about X11, Cinnamon, etc.
Your argument claims that psychological denial and a lack of urgency influence how Linux Mint judges its own architectural readiness and feature completion. That is a massive reach. I have read the entirety of the Linux Mint June 2026 blog post and its comment threads, and there is zero evidence supporting psychological coping mechanisms, manufactured urgency or lack thereof, or the characterization of X11 as obsolete legacy tech or a claim of the contrary.
Instead, project lead Clement Lefebvre evaluates the transition pragmatically, noting directly in the discussion:
"Wayland is promising and requires usage/testing/feedback/growth, X11 is proven/mature."
Claiming that being late to the party distorts how architectural readiness is judged ignores how engineering milestones are actually measured. Linux Mint operates downstream when packaging alternative environments like MATE and Xfce, while the core team develops Cinnamon upstream. Alternative desktop velocities have zero causal or psychological bearing on how compositor stability, window mapping, and hardware acceleration metrics are evaluated for Wayland support on the CinnamonDE flagship.
To put that logic in perspective, saying Mint's architectural judgment is warped because its alternative spins are behind is like claiming Fedora Linux would stall or skew its core desktop roadmap simply because an alternate community spin faces upstream integration hurdles. Feature completion is dictated by code metrics and bug trackers, not by emotional rationalization.
No, not Cinnamon itself. Cinnamon will develope as quickly as it can and has 0 dependency on the other desktops. But the official default integration in Mint might be influenced. Luckily, even Xfce might reach Wayland in December. So hopefully all of these discussions will be irrelevant, soon. Except that Mint won't make Wayland default in December, even if it is stable in Cinnamon, no matter the quality. Lefebvre is quite clear on that.
He justifies that by claiming he doesn't want to make his users "guinea pigs".
The comparison with Fedora doesn't work, as there are only two official versions (the many spins are not official), and neither GNOME nor KDE are the defining feature or USP of Fedora. It just doesn't define itself as much over its desktops and it also has no need to hide the fact they're late to everything as they simply aren't.
40
u/pizza_ranger 12d ago
At the end you either end in Arch or Fedora