Am I using XOrg or Wayland?

Question

I would like your help to find out if I'm using Xorg or Wayland. I followed a tutorial to install gnome, and before installing it, I installed Xorg, BUT, in the About section of the settings it shows that I'm using Wayland.

Does Gnome install Wayland? If yes, would it be safe to uninstall Xorg?

Solution

GNOME Shell implements a Wayland compositor, so yes, it can run without X.org, and act as a Wayland display server. (It doesn’t install Wayland separately, it implements Wayland.) You can choose whether to open a GNOME session using X or Wayland when you log in.

If you no longer need X.org, you can uninstall it. Make sure you don’t uninstall Xwayland, because you’ll still need that to run X programs on your Wayland desktop.

See How to know whether Wayland or X11 is being used to determine whether you’re running X or Wayland.

Comments

[Sadi]

Does this answer your question? How to know whether Wayland or X11 is being used

[mosvy]

@memezin If running xhost -si:localuser:$USER; xhost in a terminal emulator like gnome-terminal still shows si:localuser:some_user (despite claiming that it has been removed), then you're running Xwayland, and consequently Wayland ;-)

[mosvy]

@memezin Similarly, if even after removing si:localuser:$USER, doing X11 forwarding with fake auth data still succeeds, then you're running Wayland. xhost -si:localuser:$USER; XAUTHORITY=FOOBAR ssh -Y localhost xlogo will fail on Xorg but succeed on Xwayland/Wayland.