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I've read that Wayland is the future of display managers and works much better than X11. Can I safely use it on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS? I haven't been using any proprietary drivers (my graphics card is an Intel HD Graphics 620). Taking into consideration that my system has been working perfectly under X11, will I actually see any improvements if I switch to Wayland? Thanks in advance.

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  • Try it and see yourself! linuxconfig.org/… There may be issues with screen sharing in web meetings. Note that "will I actually see any improvements is opinion based". Jul 6, 2021 at 7:17

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Wayland indeed is by default available on your Ubuntu 20.04 system. You can switch to the Wayland session anytime. Will you see any improvements? Not sure if you really will notice. You may notice that some of your applications won't work, e.g. several screen capture programs, or Autokey, a keyboard macro utility.

Wayland improves all the time. Ubuntu switched to it for the version 17.10, but reverted to Xorg as default for the LTS 18.04. Only now, with Ubuntu 21.04, did they move the default session to Wayland again, likely for good this time.

Personally, I would stick with what the developers adopted as default. Currently, I still run Xorg because for automation I rely on command line tools like xdotool and xclip that only work on Xorg. Increasingly, alternative tools that work on Wayland become available, so I most certainly will take the dive to Wayland on Ubuntu 21.10.

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