Ubuntu 21.04 would use Wayland by Default

Before starting with Ubuntu would switch to Wayland, we need to know what Wayland is. Wayland is an open-source community-driven project developed by some volunteer developers as an alternative to the X window system. X window system is the window manager for Unix based operating system, and a quite old system notorious for its limitations and some notable issues are listed below:

• When launched, there was no clear design guideline which created incompatibility issues.
• The second issue is related to accessibility which made the system difficult to use.
• Network traffic in X is not encrypted, making it the least secure system.

To tackle these issues in 2008, another communication protocol was introduced called Wayland. This protocol serves between the display server and the client. Wayland also serves as window manager and display server that uses Wayland is also known as Wayland compositor.

Since Wayland is termed superior and the latest protocol, we must be aware of the key differences between Wayland and X.

Ubuntu introduced Wayland back in 2017 with its 17.10 release but then discontinued in 18.04 because of technical and compatibility issues.

The Ubuntu developers unveiled that Ubuntu 21.04 has decided to switch towards the Wayland display server enabled by default. They are considering it over X because Wayland is a much more secure and modern protocol.

Conclusion:

Wayland is an advanced communication protocol, and window manager with a lot of security features Xorg lacks. Many Linux distributions already support Wayland by default, and Ubuntu is also expected to accept Wayland as the default protocol. Still, Ubuntu users have to wait to get Wayland support out of the box because of technical and compatibility issues.