Smithay
Wayland compositor library in Developer tools
Rust library for building Wayland compositors, recommended as a base and for its features and design. Critics note few contributed patches have been merged.
7 people recommended Smithay in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 11 comments.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- mixed feelings
- 2
- warn against or regret it
- 2
The record
Recommended in 3 of 12 months
In 6 different threads.
- 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: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
- Recommended in 6 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 43% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 11 of the 13 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Base for Wayland compositors
“I decided to base xfwl4 on smithay's example compositor, and not write one completely from scratch.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor” “there are incredibly good libraries for making Wayland servers (wlroots, smithay, more”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Can I start using Wayland in 2026?” “wlroot and smithay are good examples of what extensions are used in the real world.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “MAUI Is Coming to Linux” - Comment from 15 Mar 2026 in “Separating the Wayland Compositor and Window Manager”
- Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers”
Good features and smart design
“decide the smithay is the best fit both for features and language choice”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor” “smart design from folks working on Smithay”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “The Dank Case for Scrolling Window Managers”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Few patches merged upstream
“Of all the aforementioned patches only two are in Smithay.”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “XWayland 26.1-rc1 Released Two Years After the Last Release”
What people recommend instead
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 | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wlroots | 14 | 4 | 5 | 74% | 5 | — | Approved |
| SmithayThis page | 7 | 2 | 2 | 78% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
11 of the 13 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Of all the aforementioned patches only two are in Smithay.”
“wlroot and smithay are good examples of what extensions are used in the real world.”
“You can do that already with libraries such as wlroots or Smithay”
“I wish Smithay was actually in Rust and not a wrapper for the C libraries”
“They all spawn from a common core written in rust”
“smart design from folks working on Smithay”
“smithay has great documentation.”
“I decided to base xfwl4 on smithay's example compositor, and not write one completely from scratch.”
“decide the smithay is the best fit both for features and language choice”
“Cosmic is still very much in beta.”
“there are incredibly good libraries for making Wayland servers (wlroots, smithay, more”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.