Xfce developers have revealed more information about their plans for version 4.20, aiming for preliminary Wayland support while continuing to support X11.

Wayland is a display protocol designed to replace X11. The majority of actively developed Linux desktop environments are in the process of adding Wayland support, with KDE and Gnome having made the most progress. Xfce has been working on its own efforts to adopt the protocol, with 4.20 slated to have preliminary support, according to the project’s wiki.

For Xfce 4.20, the plan is, to add preliminary support to Wayland to core components without losing X11 support. This doesn’t mean that by the next major release an Xfce session on Wayland will offer all existing features, but we hope it will be minimally usable. We also intend to continue refining our applications to work acceptably on Wayland (those that already work or can be made to work with low effort).

With KDE and Gnome both pushing to make Wayland the default as soon as possible, users whose workflows still rely on X11 will no doubt find comfort in Xfce’s plan to continue supporting X11 for the time being.