Game library Simple DirectMedia Layer will still use Wayland as a display server in SDL 3.0, despite much discussion about it. Joshua Ashton of Valve's Linux graphics team previously criticized a number of known issues with Wayland that X11 does not have.
SDL, or Simple DirectMedia Layer, is a cross-platform library that is widely used for video software, emulators and games. The library has been using X11 as a display server for some time, but decided to prefer Wayland in version 3. This caused frustration with Ashton from Valve's Linux graphics team, among others, who often uses LibSDL. He opened a pull request in the project on March 24, stating that Wayland still has several unresolved issues.
Ashton mentions, among other things, a number of known performance issues and issues with some of the protocols important to gamers. “There is no benefit whatsoever to games and the average application by choosing Wayland over X11,” writes Ashton.
Ashton's concerns led to a lively discussion within the pull request, discussing the pros and cons of Wayland and X11. After a few days, Sam Lantinga, maintainer of SDL and also working at Valve, made the decision. Despite the problems mentioned, SDL 3.0 continues to prefer Wayland by default.
Lantinga indicates that the people behind Wayland appear to be aware and are working on solutions. “While they're working on that, I'm leaving Wayland as the default so it's easier for others to test and provide [the people behind Wayland] with feedback. As we get closer to release, we'll reconsider the decision” , says Lantinga. The pull request has now been closed.
Wayland has been gaining ground for years. For example, Linux Mint 21.3 comes with experimental Wayland support and more Linux distros, including Fedora, are considering bringing Wayland support out of the box. SDL also previously considered giving preference to Wayland instead of X11. In January 2022, Wayland was made the standard for SDL2, but that was reversed in April that year due to various issues.