Last month I reported that GNOME’s plans to drop X11 support as soon as this year could have a major impact on Ubuntu as it plans its next LTS release — today, Ubuntu solidified those plans.

Ubuntu 25.10 ‘Questing Quokka’ will not include an X11 Ubuntu desktop session. Only a Wayland session will be available. This means it will not be possible to run the GNOME desktop on Xorg on Ubuntu 25.10.

For context, Xorg (X11) is the decades-old display server Linux desktops have used, but which is now largely unmaintained. Wayland is a modern replacement (not a clone) offering better security and performance, but not 1:1 feature parity.

Ubuntu 25.10 will only offer Wayland to those using the regular1 desktop release.

It’s a big change but it does not affect everyone:

  • Ubuntu flavours/other desktop environments are not affected
  • Running X11-based apps on Wayland (via XWayland) is not affected
  • xorg-server packages are not being dropped from the archives
  • Earlier versions of Ubuntu can continue to run GNOME on Xorg

What is changing—or will; this doesn’t affect daily builds yet—is the ability to run GNOME Shell on Xorg/X11 from Ubuntu 25.10 onwards.

Why is Ubuntu Dropping Xorg Support?

Canonical’s Jean Baptiste Lallement says this decision is about a “long-term strategy of delivering a secure, performant, and modern desktop experience”, and making the change now will “reduce fragmentation while simplifying our support matrix heading into the LTS.”

Ubuntu is, of course, already bullish on Wayland. It adopted Wayland by default in Ubuntu 21.04—having previously tried in Ubuntu 17.10—and last year made Wayland default for NVIDIA users now the user experience is deemed usable as a daily driver.

But Ubuntu’s decision is ultimately driven by upstream. 

GNOME has long wanted to jettison the burden of maintaining decades-old X11 code (and mitigating security issues it has). It plans to drop X11 code by GNOME 50, but is debating doing it sooner, losing X11 session support in GNOME 49, out in October.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS still runs GNOME X11 sessions, for those who need them

Ubuntu 25.10 will ship with GNOME 49, but if GNOME 49 removes all code to support running Mutter and GNOME Shell on Xorg/X11, Ubuntu has no choice but to follow suit.

Which means Ubuntu 25.10 loses the ability to run GNOME on Xorg because GNOME 49 loses the ability to run on Xorg —but whether forced or willing, this decision had to happen at some point.

If anyone is reading this panicking: you don’t need to. You can run GNOME on Xorg in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (supported until 2029 on the desktop, with further support beyond that, available via Ubuntu Pro) without issue, or use a different desktop environment, like Cinnamon.

Beyond its myriad security benefits, Wayland is simply where all development effort, enthusiasm and mindshare are focused. For Ubuntu to retain its role as a leading, best-in-class Linux distro, it has to be where the momentum is.

This decision helps shore up Ubuntu’s position at the forefront, even if it means leaving behind legacy compatibility a little than some might have preferred.

The Questing Quokka quests onwards!

Thanks Dominic

  1. “Ubuntu” is the name of both the project and the GNOME-based desktop OS. Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Ubuntu Cinnamon, etc are all based on Ubuntu but don’t use GNOME – so when you see “Ubuntu xx.xx” it refers to the main/regular desktop build, which uses GNOME. ↩︎