These are the two display servers that are used by Linux Distributions (and some other unix versions), but they also require support from the desktop environment with Wayland being supported by KDE and Gnome as well as being the new kid on the block respectively (next version of XFCE to include Wayland support). The article below goes into great detail on X11 and Wayland, but suffices to say X11 has a lot of legacy code going back to the 80’s to different computer configurations and is bloated and slower, and Wayland is a new display server written to be it’s replacement by a developer on X11. Consequently, Wayland is easier to work with, more secure, and faster.
https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/technology/networking/why-use-wayland-versus-x11
But the reason for this post is that since I run a bunch of Linux virtual machines on my Windows 10 desktop for my normal computing (Win10 is the main OS for limited gaming), I’ve recently had new experiences using Wayland. Normally any distribution running Wayland had issues that had me delete it or switch to X11, but recently installing Fedora 37 and OpenSUSE 15.4 I’ve started using Wayland and it’s working extremely well in VMWare Player 17. And a fair bit better than X11. Since many of these distros have switched to Wayland already, the breakthrough must have been with VMWare Player (possibly interaction with Nvidia drivers?). And I really prefer VMWare Player over Virtualbox for its superior 3D graphics support and better keyboard integration. So if you like to check out Linux distributions in a VM, time to check out the new Wayland support in VMWare Player and enjoy the new display server Wayland that appears to have arrived and fulfilled it’s replacement of X11.
