Xorg vs Wayland?
Xorg vs Wayland?
First of all, somebody make me clear about the naming. From what I understand, first there is the display server, which I assume is Xorg and also called X server? X11 is the framework and Xorg is the implementation. Then you have the window managers and compositors. Is my knowledge true? Is comparing Xorg to Wayland correct? Because after some research, comparing Wayland with X11 is also correct, because X11 is the protocol, and Xorg is the actual server, both integrated tightly in Wayland itself. You know me, I have a sense of critical performance. And display servers are a big thing so I thought to benchmark them. Before we talk about benchmarking, my initial comparison between both of them by just using the system as normal, was very minimal if not literally none. Both graphics and performance had no visible difference. You could tell me I was using one over the other without me knowing at all, unless I took a look into intel_gpu_top and saw my IMC (Integrated memory controller) I/O (not just the GPU, but also the CPU) was higher. Yes, that is one thing so far that I had noticed and that is why I am not on Wayland. It takes a lot more memory I/O than Xorg. Idle it takes 1.2 GiB/s of read whereas Xorg takes 200-300 MiB/s of read. The write numbers are much lower so I didn't account them. I don't actually know if all this I/O is coming from the GPU or the CPU, but given the fact that Wayland is more GPU accelerated and less CPU overhead, I think it is the first one. I thought to take a closer look, and maybe I can come with a minor less GPU busy on Xorg, less irq/s, and just maybe very minor more CPU power. But on Wayland, my GPU clocks stayed a bit lower, and maybe the CPU power was a bit less. The difference between the numbers is very minor. I also had thought to put a real world load, and thought to test when running a YT video, having quite a few windows open, multitasking and stuff. Anything that stutters on Xorg, will stutter on Wayland as well. There are some other things I have noticed though, such when I was on Manjaro with KDE plasma, there were many bugs with Xorg, and the performance was quite stuttery. Wayland had no problems. But if Gnome on Ubuntu is running fine, then I don't blame Xorg but plasma. KDE is probably the most aggressive when it comes to moving on to Wayland. At last, I ran the x11perf benchmark from the phoronix test suite. The result was an even 4 on 4. Some tests Xorg did better and others Wayland did better. x11perf seems to be a really old benchmark by the looks, so please do let me know if there are other benchmarks I can do. And about the question, Xorg or Wayland, for me it doesn't matter, except the memory I/O which is why I am on Xorg. Xorg is much more modular, whereas Wayland has all the compositors and window managers and the protocol and what not built into it. Of course, Xorg is legacy but I wouldn't consider it as deprecated as some call it at all. I can see running on Wayland on a modern desktop GPU, just to you know, be on the modern side, but it really doesn't matter. They say Wayland is more GPU accelerated and less CPU overhead, but with my testing the values are negligible.
Xorg is a free software version of an X Server. The latest X Server release is X11. Wayland is a standard that allows apps to talk directly to the compositor. It isn't a compositor itself, nor a window manager, and it doesn't run X11 or an X Server. For instance, Mutter works with a server that uses Wayland (and also X11).
Keep in mind that programs not yet compatible with Wayland use an X11 compatibility layer, which could affect your tests. Make sure you verify what you're measuring.
I wouldn't agree with this perspective. Wayland wasn't adopted as the default in Plasma until Plasma 6 (2024), and the X session remains mostly in maintenance. Meanwhile, GNOME has been using Wayland since 2016 and has committed to removing X support from its codebase. A major push for Wayland adoption comes from GNOME and RedHat, who aim to eliminate xorg-server entirely. Understanding this is important because RedHat manages much of the core software we rely on, and GNOME serves as the standard desktop environment. It will be removed from RHEL 10, Fedora after version 40, and Ubuntu is considering it too. We're still in a transition phase—even the next non-LTS Ubuntu release will default to Wayland on NVIDIA hardware. In the best-case scenario, this could last until around 2032, though it’s likely limited to long-term supported releases. If you depend on X, your options are limited to xwayland, which runs Wayland atop xorg. The X.Org Server is now considered deprecated on RHEL 9. Ubuntu 24.10 will switch to Wayland by default on NVIDIA, and GNOME is planning to discontinue X session support. You may choose what you want, but staying informed is essential. If you believe it won’t be removed due to compatibility issues, the only viable choices are GNOME or KDE Plasma, which are the most relevant today. Any desktop environment that doesn’t adopt the change may fade away or remain in xwayland rootfull, which isn’t ideal. I’m confident some smaller distributions might keep it for now, but mainstream adoption will decline. From a performance standpoint, I don’t have concrete data, but functionality seems to work as expected for me.
Based on my past experience with my old 980 Ti x11 system, games ran smoothly. With Wayland, it caused some issues.
Support for explicit sync on Nvidia GPU is coming in version v555.xx, and I'm currently using x11.
@Nayr438 I really don't understand though, is why there is so much aggression to move onto Wayland? Xorg for me, literally has no problems. Everything runs fine. A lot of programs, like Discord screen sharing that I have heard, haven't yet been ported to be Wayland compatible yet. Is it because then they would have to maintain their product to be compatible with both the servers?
Xorg-server has been altered and combined in unexpected ways, making it function but not meeting expectations. Wayland offers a cleaner alternative with improved security, yet it remains largely neglected due to its complexity. The current landscape favors sticking with one protocol rather than managing two, making support for multiple systems inefficient and expensive. Progress has been slow, with many commits shifting focus to Wayland instead of Xorg. While some users have already migrated, others are stuck in the middle. The Discord situation highlights a broader challenge—updates depend on specific software like Electron, which some refuse to adopt. This isn<|pad|>'s issue, not Wayland itself.
I agree, but I’d prefer Wayland if it performed better. As noted, it requires significantly more memory I/O, especially reading data. I’m unsure if this affects overall speed, but I’ve also heard Wayland can introduce a bit more latency. I didn’t check memory usage before, so I’ll investigate now, though I think the impact remains small. It’s just a matter of how things evolve—newer tech tends to be heavier, even if it does the same tasks. Vulkan is another example; it’s newer and faster.
And by the way, I'm not insisting on using Wayland, xorg-server works just fine for me. What matters is staying informed and ready. If you're comfortable with Wayland, I'd recommend it; otherwise, reach out to the relevant projects or distributions if you run into problems. Edited May 31, 2024 by Nayr438