Wayland strikes back
Ubuntu 21.04 attempts to reintroduce Wayland as the default desktop server. Will it succeed second time around?
T he headline new feature in Ubuntu 21.04 is that Wayland has been restored as the default windowing system. After one previous failed attempt to replace the ageing – if trusty – Xorg server back in Ubuntu 17.10, the folk at Canonical hope that second time’s a charm and have given themselves a year to make this attempt stick before the next LTS is released.
So, what exactly does a display server do? It provides your PC with the means to run graphical environments powered by desktops like GNOME, enabling you to point and click rather than spend all your life at the command line. Think of it as a connecting layer that sits between the kernel and your chosen desktop environment.
For decades, Linux has relied on the X Windows display server, which since 2004 has existed in opensource form via the Xorg fork. It’s been constantly evolving since the 90s, but is finally creaking under the twin burdens of increasingly unwieldy code and the demands of new graphic technologies.
In 2008, Wayland was born as a replacement to X. It aims to provide a simpler, slimmer, and more secure alternative – what’s not to like? It simplifies things by unifying the various elements involved in rendering graphical displays, including compositor, display server and window manager, in a single protocol.