There were times when it seemed like the X Window System would be with us forever, even though it is over 40 years oldand the last real version was published in 2012. But through great efforts, some organizations and operating systems have evolved. Raspberry Pi has now joined the dynamic, with its latest version of the Raspberry Pi operating system exchange at Wayland – and I hope the change will be barely noticeable.

However, you may want to wait a while before upgrading.

Simon Long wrote on the Raspberry Pi blog that the organization had started thinking about transitioning to Raspberry Pi. Wayland about 10 years ago, although it was “far from ready for use” at the time. Over the past few years, the Pi team has done a few things to prepare for real change:

• Used whisper as an X window manager in the 2021 Bullseye release, as it could also be used as a Wayland composer
• From whisper to high beam in the 2023 Bookworm release and made Wayland the default for Raspberry Pi 4 and 5
• Switched one last time to laboratorywhich is better suited to Raspberry Pi graphics hardware than Wayfire

Because labwc is built on wl rootsa modular system that allows a Wayland composer to be built without complete reinvention, it was easier to adapt to the needs of the Raspberry Pi. After efforts throughout 2024, the team is ready to call it the year of Wayland on Raspberry Pi desktops.

“After much optimization of our hardware, we have reached the point where labwc desktops run as fast as X on older Raspberry Pi models,” Long wrote. “Today we’re making the change with our latest desktop image: Raspberry Pi Desktop now runs Wayland by default on all models.”