I’d like to emphasize a major aspect that makes the switch a non-brainer: SECURITY.
The “good old days” of unencrypted Internet, where everyone could see your cookies, are no longer acceptable; the same is true of X11.
With X11, if you copy a password from your manager, you must assume all running apps now know it and transmitted it to a malicious server. There’s no way to tell.
With Wayland, it is only transmitted upon pasting, and only done directly from the copier app to the paster app.
With X11, everything displayed on the screen is compromised. Also, all inputs, keyboard and otherwise.
With Wayland, each app only sees their own pixels.
With X11, screen locking is pure hackery that doesn’t always protect the locked pixels and… login password.
Traditionally, you are meant to trust that process boundaries on Linux are sacredly secure, which is why Spectre was a big deal. But in practice, that is only true under Wayland.
The “good old days” of unencrypted Internet, where everyone could see your cookies, are no longer acceptable; the same is true of X11.
With X11, if you copy a password from your manager, you must assume all running apps now know it and transmitted it to a malicious server. There’s no way to tell.
With Wayland, it is only transmitted upon pasting, and only done directly from the copier app to the paster app.
With X11, everything displayed on the screen is compromised. Also, all inputs, keyboard and otherwise.
With Wayland, each app only sees their own pixels.
With X11, screen locking is pure hackery that doesn’t always protect the locked pixels and… login password.
Traditionally, you are meant to trust that process boundaries on Linux are sacredly secure, which is why Spectre was a big deal. But in practice, that is only true under Wayland.