Thread by @who_t

A car analogy: X and Wayland are like petrol cars vs electric vehicles (EVs). And, funnily enough, they're roughly at the same stage in the progress bar. 1/12

A lot of infrastructure work is required to make electric cars truly viable (specifically: chargers everywhere). Petrol cars' have this infrastructure because we spent a century building it. Remove a few petrol stations and range anxiety won't be limited to EVs anymore. 2/12

EVs have been around for a while, but only recently have they become truly viable, in part because the infrastructure is being put in place. For large parts of the population, switching to an EV is an initial cost/adjustment but the everyday use-cases are covered. 3/12

For some use-cases EVs are not (yet) suitable. More infrastructure is needed and there are probably cases where we'll never be able to use them. 4/12

But fighting against EVs taking over is pointless. The industry is committed and at some point the market will tilt - petrol cars will become a luxury, too expensive/hard to keep because the infrastructure is no longer there. Not in the next decade but it will happen. 5/12

Now, back to X/Wayland: Wayland is roughly where EVs are right now. Lots of infrastructure has been put in place, but there are situations where it's not suitable yet. 6/12

For many users, using Wayland is an initial adjustment (e.g. installing a more recent distribution) but the everyday use-cases are covered. For others Wayland isn't suitable yet. More infrastructure is needed and there are cases where we'll never be able to use Wayland. 7/12

Fighting against Wayland taking over is pointless. There is near-zero investment into Xorg right now. The car analogy: no-one develops petrol cars anymore. You may want one, but that doesn't mean someone will magically provide. 8/12

Xorg (the X server running on hardware) has no maintainer, no-one committed to make releases, no-one willing to invest in it. No new cars are being released to the market. That's not an immediate problem - you may be happy with it right now. But in a few years time? 9/12

At some point the market will tilt and running Xorg will become a special case. We're not there yet, but that point is slowly approaching. And it depends on the use-case anyway, Xorg may no longer work for some while Wayland is still not viable for other use-cases. 10/12

None of this should be a surprise, all of this is well known. Reality just has more of a greyscale than social media allows. (Also, car analogies only go so far...)11/12

And, funnily or sadly enough, it doesn't even matter whether Wayland is better. Infrastructure investment is the only thing that matters in the long term. 12/12