Xfce 4.20 roadmap reveals preliminary support for Wayland while keeping X11 compatibility

The Xfce development team has laid out the roadmap for Xfce 4.20, which should include preliminary support for Wayland in its core components, while keeping the existing X11 support intact. However, this does not assure a fully-featured Xfce session on Wayland by the next major release. The goal is to have a minimally operational version, with further enhancements to ensure that applications work properly on Wayland.

The exact timeline for a full transition to Xfce Wayland is still uncertain. The Xfce team recognizes that there are numerous large-scale tasks that need to be addressed for such a transition to occur, which makes it uncertain whether a full transition will happen at all. The developers are optimistic about launching initial Wayland support with the Xfce 4.20 release, which might be expected for late 2024 or early 2025.

In the meantime, you can still use and enjoy Xfce 4.18, which is a very good and stable desktop environment that came with numerous enhancements and bug fixes.