Wayland Overview

May 26, 2026

Wayland is a protocol that defines how client applications can communicate with a display server, and is a modern alternative to X11's ancient design. It's had a relatively slow adoption, and that has resulted in quite a few compatibility issues and headaches for a lot of Linux users. Despite the issues, it's still the best modern-day option, so today we'll be putting in some groundwork for supporting Wayland inside Breezy.

Also available on Odysee

What's included?

Today, we set up the Wayland socket to receive client connections, configure a few hotkeys to launch and terminate clients, and then try to connect a test client to our server. While it technically does establish the connection, it's only for a very brief moment before it falls victim to some very predictable sadness.

Determined to get something to hold a connection, we try a few other ideas, and eventually land on something that results in some colorful rectangles.

Related Links

Here's the PR for these changes: Github PR #4

The "Wayland Overview" notes page goes into a lot more of the Wayland protocol details if you're interested!

I'd also used some OpenGL in this video, so you might find the "OpenGL Overview" page interesting as well.