What Wayland is
- Wayland is a display server protocol: a language apps (clients) use to talk to a compositor (the display server). In Wayland, the compositor is the display server.
- The protocol is minimal by design; lots of features come via extensions (e.g., xdg-shell, layer-shell).
How it differs from X11
- Direct model: the compositor reads input and renders windows; apps report “what changed” (damage) to it—no middleman X server with forwarding and reparenting. This cuts complexity and can reduce latency/tearing.
wayland.freedesktop.org
- Security model: by default, one app can’t snoop on another’s input/screen; things like screen-sharing go through portals (user-mediated APIs).
Who ships it
- Hyprland is a modern, dynamic-tiling Wayland compositor with lots of recent-protocol support.