Recognize Wayland or Xorg

Most common Linux distributions come out with Wayland right away. Ubuntu has already switched to Wayland since 22.04, and Fedora has been shipping with Wayland for a long time. SUSE and Debian distributions have recently joined the list. But Wayland still has some challenges, most notably that many older programs are not supported or don't work well. If you have problems with older programs, you should check which display server is being used. There are several ways to do this.

What is Wayland

Wayland is a display protocol that is being developed as an alternative to the X Window System for managing the windowing interface on Linux operating systems. Wayland aims to offer a more modern and efficient GUI architecture than the X Window System, which was developed over 30 years ago. Wayland is intended to improve the performance, security, and overall stability of the GUI on Linux systems.

What is Xorg

Xorg (X.Org) is a free and open source implementation of the X Window System, which is the standard for the GUI in most Linux distributions. Xorg is a display server that manages graphical elements on the screen, such as windows, buttons, and other interface elements. It provides basic functionality for working with graphics and interacting with computer hardware.

Xorg provides the ability to run graphics applications and window managers on Linux systems, providing the user with a convenient and intuitive way to interact with the computer. It also supports extensions and drivers, allowing the graphics subsystem to be customized and optimized for specific user needs.

Checking Wayland or Xorg

The most convenient and accessible method to view the display server is to display the contents of the XDG_SESSION_TYPE environment variable. If Wayland is currently in use, wayland will be output, and if Xorg is in use, X11 will be output:

$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

Also, the user can always find out the type of the current session by using loginctl. To view the list of sessions, run the program with the list-sessions command or without parameters:

$ loginctl list-sessions

To display the type of a particular session, pass its identifier to the show-session command. For example, if the session number is 3:

$ loginctl show-session 3 -p Type

All of this is also accomplished with one simple command that gives you the session ID from the XDG_SESSION_ID environment variable:

$ loginctl show-session "$XDG_SESSION_ID" -p Type

In Ubuntu, this information is also viewable in the GUI. You need to go to Settings, go to About System and find Window Interface.

Then you will see the name of the display server:

That's all for now, in the next article we will tell you how to find out how the application is used by Wayland.