14 DAY TRIAL // Lubuntu developer Simon Quigley informs Softpedia about a major change coming to future Lubuntu releases, namely the switch to the next-generation Wayland display server by default instead of X.Org Server.
Like its bigger brother Ubuntu and other official flavors, Lubuntu is still using the old X.Org Server by default, though nothing stops users to switch to Wayland if they want a more secure and capable display server for their computers, but that's about to change in the coming years as Lubuntu will adopt Wayland by default.
Ubuntu already tried to move to Wayland by default with the now deprecated Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) release, but it had to switch back to X.Org Server and put Wayland on the back seat as an alternative session, which users can select from the login manager, with the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) release.
Most probably, Ubuntu developers will continue to make the Wayland switch permanent in upcoming releases, and so are the Lubuntu developers, who aim for the Lubuntu 20.10 release in two years from now, on October 2020, for the switch to the next-generation display server by default.
When asked why the switch to Wayland, Lubuntu developer Simon Quigley answered, "The X implementation is old and won’t be updated to address the way desktop Linux is used today. Window managers are an afterthought, and many things aren’t implemented correctly. Wayland is a modern take on the Linux display system."
Nvidia graphics cards will be supported, Openbox ported to Mir
If you're asking yourselves why it will take two years for Lubuntu devs to switch to Wayland by default, the quick answer is that the window manager Lubuntu uses by default, namely Openbox, needs to be ported to Canonical's Mir display server, which is in active development and fully compatible with Wayland.
Moreover, they need to work hard on a solution to support Nvidia graphics cards out-of-the-box, and Lubuntu developer Simon Quigley assured us that there is a solution for Nvidia GPUs in place. Until then, Lubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) is coming this fall on October 18, 2018, as the first release with the LXQt desktop environment by default.