Wayland is a project to define a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a library implementation of the protocol.

Wayland vs XQuartz Comments

- Wayland is Free and Open Source
- Wayland is Lightweight
XQuartz is described as 'This provides a windowing system for some applications that normally run on Linux, as well as for forwarding GUI from the server to your client computer' and is a Window Manager in the os & utilities category. There are four alternatives to XQuartz for Linux and BSD. The best XQuartz alternative is Wayland, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like XQuartz are X11, Phoenix X server and Mir.
Wayland is a project to define a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a library implementation of the protocol.


The X.Org project provides an open source implementation of the X Window System. The development work is being done in conjunction with the freedesktop.org community. The X.Org Foundation is the educational non-profit corporation whose Board serves this effort, and whose Members...


X11 doesn't run on Mac to support X11 applications on a remote device.


Phoenix is a new X server, written from scratch in Zig (not a fork of Xorg server). This X server is designed to be a modern alternative to the Xorg server.
Doesn't run on Mac to support X11 applications on a remote device.

Wayland doesn't run on Mac to support X11 applications on a remote device.