In the autumn release of Ubuntu 25.10, support for the X11 GNOME session will be discontinued, leaving only the option to launch the Wayland session on the login screen. The ability to run X11 applications through XWayland remains unchanged. The distribution will also continue to ship packages with X.org components and alternative desktop environments using X11, which can be installed from the repository.
The reason for removing the X11 session is mentioned as the GNOME project's plans to cease support for X11 and the implementation of a long-term strategy by Ubuntu to provide a secure, high-performance, and modern desktop environment. Maintaining both X11 and Wayland sessions simultaneously leads to an accumulation of technical debt, increases maintenance efforts, and limits the ability to effectively implement innovations.
In the autumn release of GNOME 49, the display manager GDM (GNOME Display Manager), which provides the login screen, has decided to disable the X11 session by default. Complete removal of the code for supporting the X11 session from GNOME is expected in GNOME 50, scheduled for release next spring. An ideal scenario is also mentioned, where the X11 code could be removed in GNOME 49 if no new problems or bugs arise during the process of disabling X11.
There is also a possibility that GNOME developers may revert the changes and delay the disabling of X11, but this can only occur if a critical unforeseen problem is identified. Efforts to eliminate X11 are also being made in the GTK library — the backend for the X11 protocol was marked as deprecated in February, and GTK5 is planned to only support Wayland.
It is noted that the Wayland session in Ubuntu has been stabilized and has reached a mature state suitable for most typical tasks — support for Wayland in proprietary NVIDIA drivers has been improved, a more reliable security model has been implemented, isolation of the graphical stack has been enhanced, the desktop environment has been prepared for everyday use, and support for touch screens and hi-DPI has been improved.
Source: opennet.ru
