Canonical has just announced that the Bionic Beaver 18.04 will use Xorg as default video server instead of Wayland. This comes as no surprise, as I think Canonical pulled the trigger on Wayland too early.
While I think Wayland is one of the best things to happen for Linux, it is still ‘future’ for now due to compatibility issues with several applications. Almost all applications which need root access to run will not execute at all. Earlier we showed how to switch your Ubuntu 17.10 installation to use Xorg instead of Wayland.
Bionic Beaver, the codename for the next Ubuntu LTS release, is due in April 2018 will ship with both the older Xorg graphics server as well as the newer Wayland server, but Xorg will be the default.
These are the exact reasons for this direction in their own words:
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Screen sharing in software like WebRTC services, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc works well under Xorg
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Remote Desktop control for example RDP & VNC works well under Xorg
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Recoverability from Shell crashes is less dramatic under Xorg
Canonical, further added that they will continue testing and may consider Wayland as default for Ubuntu 18.10 LTS, which should launch around Oct 2018.
Interested in knowing what’s new in Ubuntu 18.04? Read our constantly updated article here.
