Linux admins,

GNOME 50 has finally dropped X11 for good. If you've been around Linux long enough, you know why this matters. Wayland was created with a better focus on security - no cross-process snooping, no shared input, no guessing what another app’s drawing.

Read on to learn more about the security improvements available in Wayland, how trust works on the desktop and changes you may need to make to your systems to take advantage of these security features.

Yours in Open Source, 

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Dave Wreski

LinuxSecurity Founder

GNOME 50: Wayland-Only Brings Enhanced Security and Isolation

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GNOME 50 finally drops X11 for good. Jordan Petridis called it on the GNOME blog, and the change landed with Mutter’s merge request !4505. That’s the code that removes the last X11 session logic. Years of slow migration work wrapped in a single commit that basically says, we’re done here.

If you’ve been around Linux long enough, you know why this matters. X11 was clever but way too trusting. Any app could read input, log keystrokes, or peek at another window’s display. That kind of openness made sense decades ago when everything was local. Not now. Wayland security shuts that down completely — no cross-process snooping, no shared input, no guessing what another app’s drawing.

Learn About GNOME 50>>

Examining Open-Source Security: Benefits and Risks for the Future

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Open-source security sits right in the middle of how we build software now. Most teams grab code from public repos, plug it in, and move fast. That’s fine until something deep in the stack breaks or turns out to be risky. Transparency helps, but that value depends on the people behind it.

At its core, open-source security is about keeping track of what you’re using and how safe it really is. It’s not just patching when a CVE drops. It’s knowing your dependencies, watching for abandoned projects, and spotting weak code before it becomes a bigger problem.

 

Learn About Open-Source Security>>