The October 2024 edition of Linux Mint’s Monthly News brings exciting updates, including a significant announcement about collaboration with Framework Laptops, having potential to advance Mint’s compatibility with hardware designed with flexibility, repairability, and sustainability in mind.
For those unfamiliar, unlike most traditional laptops, which are often difficult or impossible to repair or upgrade, Framework laptops are built to be user-friendly, making it easy to replace or upgrade components. This modular approach extends the laptop’s lifespan and promotes sustainability by reducing e-waste.
Difficult to concisely explain what Wayland is.
Software in the Linux ecosystem tends to be built on earlier projects. You may be aware of the various Desktop Environments like Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, xfce, etc. Something they all have, or had, in common was they all used a truly ancient piece of software called X11. This is the Windowing server. Most of the look and feel of a desktop environment comes from a configuration file that sets up X11 to work a certain way.
X11 has been a standard for longer than Linux has existed, it dates to the early 80’s. It is quite old and isn’t capable of keeping up with some newer technologies like multiple monitors at different framerates, HDR, there are problems with things like Freesync, etc.
Wayland is a project for replacing X11 with a newer system designed with modern display technology in mind. It works a little differently, and it breaks compatibility with a lot of long-standing systems, but it’s now in use by several DEs by default. At the moment there are technical reasons to use Wayland and technical reasons to use X11.