Linux Mint 23 will have full Wayland support (but X11 is staying)

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/07/linux-mint-wayland-fully-supported

Publish Date: 2026-07-08 12:15:00

Linux Mint says Wayland support in its next release will no longer be considered experimental, but available as a fully-supported option.

However, it will continue to provide and support X11, unlike other Linux distributions which have jettisoned the legacy Xorg/X11 display server from their default installations – Ubuntu dropped Xorg support in 25.10.

“We worked really hard on Wayland and we got to the point where it feels solid and the experience is almost on par with X11”, Clement Lefebvre wrote in an update, confirming “both X11 and Wayland will be fully supported” in the next release.

Whether Wayland will become the default session in Linux Mint 23 is yet known. As I reported in March, Lefebvre has said he wants the option “on the table” without committing to a timeline for the switch.

Cinnamon’s improved its Wayland support

Lefebvre reels off a raft of recent improvements made to the Cinnamon Wayland experience, which he says has got it to a state where it’s virtually on par with X11 for day-to-day usage.

Among them, Cinnamon on Wayland can now map the size and position of windows, applets and content menus correctly1, and focus stealing prevention was added to ensure typing or clicks don’t land in a different app without explicit user interaction.

Multi-monitor setups and hardware KVM switches are better supported, while improved HiDPI support brings sharper text and icon rendering. Hardware acceleration was also plumbed in across the compositor, desktop and Wayland and XWayland clients.

Root apps can now run on Wayland (not via XWayland) and support for Window Progress means progress indicators, like bar Nemo applies to its taskbar button during copy actions, work as intended.

Wayland aside, the next version of Cinnamon also brings a new cinnamon-list-windows command, used for listing all open windows and related data like position, size, HiDPI support and so on, and supports…

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