Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Dropping The X.Org Server Except For XWayland

Red Hat has formally confirmed what many were thinking: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 will be doing away with X.Org Server support aside from XWayland.

For those making use of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 in a desktop setting, RHEL10 due for release in H1'2025 will be Wayland-focused. X11 client support will only come via XWayland.

Red Hat's Carlos Soriano Sanchez confirmed on the Red Hat blog:

"The result of this evaluation is that, while there are still some gaps and applications that need some level of adaptation, we believe the Wayland infrastructure and ecosystem are in good shape, and that we’re on a good path for the identified blockers to be resolved by the time RHEL 10 is out, planned to be released on the first half of 2025.

With this, we’ve decided to remove Xorg server and other X servers (except Xwayland) from RHEL 10 and the following releases. Xwayland should be able to handle most X11 clients that won’t immediately be ported to Wayland, and if needed, our customers will be able to stay on RHEL 9 for its full life cycle while resolving the specifics needed for transitioning to a Wayland ecosystem. It’s important to note that “Xorg Server” and “X11” are not synonymous, X11 is a protocol that will continue to be supported through Xwayland, while the Xorg Server is one of the implementations of the X11 protocol.
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This decision will allow us to focus our efforts starting from RHEL 10 solely on a modern stack and ecosystem. This means we will be able to tackle problems such as HDR, increased security, setups with mixed low and high density displays or very high density displays, better GPU/Display hot-plugging, better gestures and scrolling, and so on. We are confident that Wayland will provide a solid platform and we’re excited to work with the community and all of our partners and customers on building the future for Linux."

Hardly a surprise at this stage, but great to see Red Hat feeling comfortable and confident enough in Wayland's primetime role with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.

This does also further solidify the X.Org Server in effect being dead upstream. Red Hat engineers were typically the ones managing new X.Org Server releases as well as carrying on with various bits of development. There hasn't been a major X.Org Server release in years aside from XWayland with no one stepping up to manage a new feature release or even point releases really besides when it's rolling out security fixes or prominent bug fixes. Come 2025, Red Hat will be even less inclined to make any further investments into the X.Org Server besides the security/bug treatment for RHEL9 customers.