Wayland
Last updated:Wayland is a graphical subsystem intended to replace the X11 window system.
The trouble is, it doesn't completely replace X11. There is still functionality in X which people use regularly and have no replacement for in Wayland. That would be okay if Wayland wasn't being turned on more and more in Linux distributions, but it is.
These are not small-time Linux distributions bravely forging a path towards our great divine Wayland future, carving a niche for themselves so that any brave souls can get a taste for this new software stack. Were that the case there'd be no controversy; people like to tinker with new software. But they don't like it forced down their throat.
Looking at Debian's Wayland FAQ, we see:
I'm accustomed to running various programs (e.g. synaptic) as root in my X session. How will this work under Wayland?
(In fact, synaptic was temporarily removed from buster because it didn't work under Wayland.)
Ah, so now we're removing software because the new replacement for X doesn't support that existing software's functionality, instead of waiting for the replacement to actually support it. I'm sure that went over well for the Debian users using Synaptic.
I could go on, but someone else already did, Boycott Wayland.
Update May 5th, 2024
I found another great writeup from a developer on MPV. He gets into technical details about how Wayland works, what features it is missing, and how the developers aren't so interested in implementing these features. His justification for these features are not like this absurdity from XKCD. Although a lot of it flies over my head, it sure seems he has valid use cases for them in MPV. The main problem it seems is that MPV is not allowed to render when it wants. MPV is a video player, so it is clear that rendering time is crucial for smooth video playback, and MPV knows better than Wayland when to draw.