Summary
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Wayland is no longer “experimental” in Linux Mint; Cinnamon will be fully compatible with Wayland and X11.
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X11 is still available; switch sessions at login to choose X11 or Wayland.
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Stable Wayland in the next major update at Christmas time; experimental stays until its launch.
Not all Linux distributions take the same stance when it comes to X11 vs. Wayland. Some support both, some are ditching X11 for the newer Wayland, and others are still sticking with the legacy option. Linux Mint has always given people the choice between the two, but the Wayland option has always been marked as “experimental” as the community works out bugs.
Well, it looks like the experiment is finally over. The Linux Mint team has officially announced that Wayland will be fully supported, although people who prefer X11 have nothing to worry about just yet.
Linux Mint’s Wayland integration finally comes out of experimental mode
But it will be a while until we can use it.
Beyond the Linux Mint BlogThe team has posted their monthly status update to keep everyone informed. This month, the team announced that the next major update for the operating system will finally take Wayland out of the testing phase:
We worked very hard on Wayland and got to the point where it feels solid and the experience is almost on par with X11. Wayland support will no longer be considered “experimental.” In the next version of Cinnamon, both X11 and Wayland will be fully supported.
It looks like X11 support isn’t going anywhere, which is a relief. However, as people pointed out in the comments, the blog post does not mention whether X11 or Wayland will become the default session for new installations. Fortunately, changing your session is as simple as going to the login screen and choosing the other option, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to use whichever technology you choose.
Unfortunately, it will still be a while until Wayland is released on Linux Mint. The development team says the next major update will arrive around Christmas, so you’ll have to make do with the experimental version until then.
