14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical's Will Cooke, Director of Ubuntu Desktop, announced today that the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system would ship with the X.Org graphics stack by default instead of the next-generation Wayland display server.
Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) was the first Ubuntu release to ship with Wayland as default display server, while the XOrg session was put on the back seat, but now it looks like Canonical wants to play it safe for their next LTS (Long-Term Support) release, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), and decided to go with the old XOrg graphics stack by default for new installations.
"As we are roughly half way through the Bionic development cycle, the time was right for us to review that decision and make a call on whether or not Wayland is the right default display server for Bionic," says Will Cooke. "We have decided that we will ship Xorg by default, and that Wayland will be an optional session available from the login screen."
The decision to put Wayland on the back seat and ship with the Xorg graphics stack by default for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was taken because screen sharing works well under Xorg with software like Google Hangouts, Skype, or WebRTC services, Remote Desktop services like VNC or RDP also work well under Xorg, and the recoverability from GNOME Shell crashes appears to be less dramatic under Xorg.
This was a bit expected, because Ubuntu 18.04 is an LTS release supported for the next five years with software and security updates, and many Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users will want to upgrade their installations to the Bionic Beaver this spring. As such, Canonical needs to be certain that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is a strong and very stable release where things don't break.
Wayland might make a comeback as default session in Ubuntu 18.10
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) will launch on April 26, 2018, and those who want to use the next-generation Wayland display server will be able to do that by selecting it from the login screen. Canonical will stick with GNOME Shell as default user interface for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and says that a protocol to provide screen sharing services may be coming to Wayland, but not as fast as they would have hoped.
The older Xorg graphics stack offers a solid option for users who need screen sharing features, says Canonical's Will Cooke, who notes the fact that Wayland offers a much more secure environment then Xorg and recommends users to use it if they don't rely on the screen sharing functionality. Also, the GNOME desktop environment appears to be a lot more stable and reliable on Xorg than it is on Wayland.
Canonical also said that they are re-evaluating Wayland as default graphics stack for the Ubuntu 18.10 release, which should see the light of day later this year at the end of October. Until then, all eyes are on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), which will ship with the upcoming GNOME 3.28 desktop environment, but use the older Nautilus 3.26 file manager to provide support for desktop icons.