# Wayland Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/wayland/ 186 people recommended Wayland in Hacker News comments, 68 had mixed feelings and 369 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. People who said how long they have used it report a median of 3 years, among 28 people. It was recommended in 12 of 12 months, in 75 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended, mainly for fragmented compositors, strict security limits and missing X11 features; those who recommend it see it as a more stable, modern replacement for X11 with better mixed-DPI, HDR and multi-monitor support. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. Claude agents reviewed it against the quotes on 2 Nov 2026. ## What people warn about - Still missing features X11 had (5 comments in the sample): "it's really frustrating when people feel this rush to move off the old way that's working in favor of a new way that doesn't yet…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100734)) "replacements seem dead or ineffective or incomplete - that is quite frustrating for something that was aggressively advertised as "this is now the future" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279538)) "accessibility tools which need access to everything X gave them are never going to be compatible without being completely rewritten with Wayland in mind" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46968520)) - Fragmented, incompatible compositor implementations (4 comments in the sample): "Wayland is improving, but there is still a difference between what the spec supports and what developers can rely on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46001205)) "Moving complexity from the layer you only have one of, to the layers where there are many, many competing pieces of software…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486758)) "A design that requires everyone to implement their own protocols and everyone to refix the same bugs in their own compositor is inherintly bad." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49369058)) - Security model blocks app interaction (4 comments in the sample): "The only understandable complaint is that wayland makes it hard for different windows to interact with one another for security." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479057)) "There's no cross platform way to do that with Wayland because ""security"" means it's supposedly dangerous for programs to read the title bars of other…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46107893)) "The problem is old (and even not so old) apps don't expose those APIs so interactions like UI automation on Wayland is limited…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452999)) - Pushed as default before ready (2 comments in the sample): "it may have got a bad name by being rolled out by distros (especially as the default) before it was ready for most users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487782)) "the community got constantly browbeat with 'this is the future' and 'it's so much faster!' when recent benchmarks have proven that to be false" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49377976)) ## Why people recommend it - More stable than X11 (6 comments in the sample): "I've been using wayland on three computers for the last two or three years and haven't had a crash that could be attributed to wayland" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086542)) "this GPU (Radeon VII) crashes regularly under X11 nearly every time I open a new window, but is perfectly stable under wayland" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486950)) "I have used a Wayland only system for a long time and application-level crashes certainly don't bring down other applications" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46064622)) - Mostly works fine now (4 comments in the sample): "I use Wayland exclusively everyday and I screen record with OBS on both KDE and GNOME on multiple machines with no issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452167)) "Turns out: absolutely no problem. The tooling around Wayland and adjacent programs is way more modern and functional." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504654)) "to me it seems to work fine and X11 did seem to be carrying a lot of legacy baggage so a renew seems like a…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47453744)) - Per-display scaling and refresh rates (3 comments in the sample): "My big use case that Wayland enabled was being able to dock my laptop and seamlessly switching apps between displays with different scale factors." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486697)) "HDR support, high bitdepth, per-screen refreshrate/scaling, and all those things are just "no apparant advantage" to you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246905)) "HDR support, 10/12bit colors, displays with different dpi/refresh rate etc is just not really an obvious benefit to you?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46491065)) ## Other display servers people recommend - [X11 (X.Org)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/x11/): 103 recommend, 26 mixed, 94 criticize - [Xorg](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xorg/): 30 recommend, 7 mixed, 33 criticize - [XLibre](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xlibre/): 23 recommend, 5 mixed, 33 criticize - [X Window System](https://hackerapproved.com/p/x-window-system/): 22 recommend, 4 mixed, 25 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Wayland", https://hackerapproved.com/p/wayland/ (186 recommend, 68 mixed, 369 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.