GNOME on Wayland
Shares rank 19 of 24 desktop environments by recommenders
People recommend it for strong trackpad gesture support and for being faster and more carefully designed than KWin. Critics cite poor trackpad performance and monitor ordering bugs.
People recommend it for strong trackpad gesture support and for being faster and more carefully designed than KWin. Critics cite poor trackpad performance and monitor ordering bugs.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong trackpad gesture support
“it has some of the best support for trackpad gestures of any Linux desktop experience I've ever tried”
Comment from 28 Dec 2025 in “Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief” Faster and more carefully designed than KWin
“gnome's wayland compositor is somewhat faster and more carefully designed than kwin”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK” Fine in everyday use
“both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Poor trackpad performance
“poor trackpad performance in Gnome/Wayland”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “We Rebuilt the Linux MicroVM Stack on Apple Silicon” Breaks monitor ordering on macOS
“breaks monitor ordering on MacOS reliably and Gnome+Wayland frequently”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark”
Other desktop environments people recommend
The four most recommended other desktop environments, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KDE Plasma | 650 | 264 | 71% | 13 | 2 yrs79 owners | Approved |
| GNOME | 340 | 464 | 42% | 12 | 5 yrs29 owners | — |
| Xfce | 183 | 48 | 79% | 12 | 10 yrs29 owners | Approved |
| COSMIC desktop | 75 | 28 | 73% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| GNOME on WaylandThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“poor trackpad performance in Gnome/Wayland”
“whatever Wayland+GNOME Ubuntu (2024?) brought by itself.”
“gnome's wayland compositor is somewhat faster and more carefully designed than kwin”
“I much prefer the latter, especially since I get the choice.”
“both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience”
“it has some of the best support for trackpad gestures of any Linux desktop experience I've ever tried”
“breaks monitor ordering on MacOS reliably and Gnome+Wayland frequently”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.