X11 vs Wayland: what does the timeline look like?

[Fungal-net]

> At this time it looks like I cannot switch to Wayland -- several things
> about Wayland just don't work (for me).
> 
> I know of at least three things where Wayland simply fails:
> 
> I use KiCAD and KiCAD just does not work with Wayland:
> https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/

I haven't run anything that runs on X that will not run with Xwayland.

> I use FVWM2 as my window manager. And I believe FVWM2 uses features of X11
> that are not available in Wayland. And no I don't like Gnome or KDE (or
> really any so-called "modern" desktop environment.

There is an α or β experimental still system called wayback, basically uses
xwayland to provide an X environment to run an X wm or dt on top of wlroots.
Yes, fvwm3 was one of the few I tried.  

There is also labwc which is an openbox port to wayland and it is a delight
to play with.  It is also about 1/10 the size of fvwm

> Also I use SSH X11 tunneling very extensively. I have a whole LAN full of
> little Linux machines (mostly assorted 'Pis). Some of these are lower end
> machines that I don't want to run full-fledged desktop environments on and use
> RDP or VNC with, expecially just to run a simple X11 program on.

Cage is another low resource way to run an application alone is wayland, no wm
needed.  

> So, is there a likely timeline where X11 (in whatever form that takes)
> "vanishes" and Wayland totally replaces it as the graphical server
> infratructure under Linux? Are we talking a few years, a decade, or several
> decades?

How would x11 vanish, if any of us have the code and a reliable place to store
it there will always be fork around.  Will C glibc/gcc change so much nobody will
be able to update it so it will compile, even if, the kept binaries will last
some centuries on the right antique machine.

The reason I don't use it is 1
sudo -u or doas xxx-user X or Wayland app. refuses to start, no seat no xdg runtime
and even when you cheat and get it able it would be isolated from the rest of the
system as if it was a container.  What I believe the problem is that it is an intentional
decision not to allow user1 to run an app. as user2