{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreicysobkzxnkwurrdai4naeh3ztzzrryi4irsiddsxyr4v3klxj5ri",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:hqad6xwuzg7oqfmwylfkvqfm/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlbxuqtvmyr2"
  },
  "path": "/viewtopic.php?t=33412&p=273642#p273642",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-07T19:16:13.000Z",
  "site": "http://forum.palemoon.org",
  "textContent": "> Don't misunderstand me here: just things rolling around in my brain playing \"what if\" scenarios for \"what if Linux goes mad and pushes for GTK4+Wayland only\" hypotheticals  Not having any plans or anything. Just to be 100% unambiguously clear.\n> I'd sooner just toss it all to the Linux community to maintain (and not having Linux builds) than forcing angry neckbeards to use Wine when they don't want to touch Microsoft even by proxy  _I know better._\n\nYeah, this is where we are with this right now.\n\nMy personal prediction is that XWayland is here to stay and we can safely target that for the foreseeable future. But we have to consider the worst-case scenario of GTK3 being dropped, and Linux going native Wayland only and killing XWayland to \"make a statement,\" because Linux can be weirdly political and idealistic rather than pragmatic at times, and has shot itself in the foot with that mentality before.\n\nLike, to ground this more in reality... the Red Hat/Freedesktop.org people, the very people pushing Wayland, play a big role in maintaining XWayland for their enterprise customers because they know 40 years of Unix software were built on X11. Right now, the adults are still in the room, and they know they need that compatibility layer, and that a lot of past software that's already written isn't going to be rewritten for Wayland. IBM does not have a history of killing backwards compatibility, I think they still ship systems that run COBOL code for some enterprises. GNOME, the people we all love to hate... has tried offering things like GNOME Flashback and GNOME Classic desktop options that make their modern offering look more like GNOME 2.\n\nWhat all this adds up to, is that they are aware that they need a compatibility layer, that some people will be compiling and running old code, and that some people are not happy with the modern GNOME UI. They are hoping XWayland and stuff like GNOME Classic sessions that make a half-way attempt to look more like GNOME 2 will be enough of a peace offering to keep older people who have investments in X11 code and don't like modern GNOME in their orbit even as they move forward with their modern stack. So far, what they're signaling is more that they want new applications written in Wayland, and are trying to _discourage_ the use of X11 and GTK2, but not outright forbid it or force people to hand-compile the packages like we had to do with Python 2. They appear to be slow-walking this one, to the point that I would be surprised if they drop the XWayland compatibility layer before 2040 (and maybe not even then). XWayland isn't seen as the enemy of Wayland adoption, it's seen as the price of getting people to use Wayland for everything that supports it already and not just get mad and run a full X11 desktop session the moment they hit something that wasn't designed for Wayland like they were doing before. They did not want to build that layer, they only built it in 2021 because they knew people would never accept Wayland without it. That tells us a lot, really.\n\nThe scenario we're preparing for is that as time passes and management turns over, the younger Wayland/GNOME idealists somehow get into the control room at IBM and start nuking everything, killing XWayland, ripping all GTK versions older than 4 out of EPEL, and downstream distros who can't maintain security patches themselves just drop older GTK and apologize that everything is breaking because they don't have the manpower to do what Red Hat won't do anymore.\n\nWhy do I think they won't do it? Because Wayland advocates saw what happened when they tried to push Wayland with no X11 fallback already... they saw that people rejected it. Also, at some point it may be seen as more like the Unix equivalent of Wine or DOSBox. A compatibility layer for older software. If you want modern features, you use Wayland... if you want to run old software, XWayland is there to catch you. That's not incompatible with the worldview of more sane pro-Wayland people, there are probably people in that camp who want X11 to be the old thing that needs a compatibility layer, and Wayland to be the thing modern applications are written in. Only the truly radical ones want to make sure no one ever runs an old Unix application that hasn't been reworked runs on top of Wayland ever again, or feel offended by the use of it. And then... if you think about what it would be replaced with, it's even sillier. Get rid of XWayland, those people will run the Windows version in Wine, or the X11 version in a VM running an old version of Linux, which probably isn't the direction they want unless they're radical and have no common sense.\n\nReally, I think we don't need to worry about Wayland as much as we need to worry about older GTK being removed, because it's a complex toolkit tied into too many GNOME packages associated with older GNOME desktops, and not a simple toolkit like Motif or Qt or most other toolkits you can think of. This isn't paranoia because we know Linux distros will do things like that. That's what I actually think, but the Wayland angle complicates things and naturally makes people wonder if it's even worth moving to a newer toolkit version but sticking with X11, which is a lot more doable than going native Wayland.\n\n* * *",
  "title": "Browser Development • Re: Linux Pale Moon with Qt toolkit",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-07T19:16:13.000Z"
}