Wayland WILL ship as the default display server in Ubuntu 17.10 ‘Artful Aardvark’.

Although always the intended plan, Ubuntu devs did express doubts about making switch last month, with Ubuntu desktop team lead Will Cooke saying he felt that “Wayland isn’t ready yet”.

But several weeks, lots of user testing, and one GUADEC later a decision is now in place: Ubuntu 17.10 will ship with Wayland as the default session.

As we’ve reasoned in previous articles, there is a stack of ideological, political and technical reasons why Ubuntu would want to switch to Wayland in this release, as soon as possible, not least because an LTS looms large.

Canonical’s Didier Roche backs this up, saying that the switch will be a chance for Ubuntu devs to “get some good set (sic) of feedback to be ready and make our final decision for our next LTS, 18.04.”

The Ubuntu 17.10 daily builds should make the relevant switches to make Wayland the default session shortly — but that doesn’t stop you from being able to help test Ubuntu 17.10 with Wayland right now.

The Xorg session is still included

If you’re a NVIDIA user, a big gamer, or happen to be using hardware that this next-gen display server tech doesn’t yet play nice with, do not panic. Although Wayland will be default it isn’t compulsory.

Ubuntu will still have an X session available out of the box, ready to roll, a click or two away.

And that should come as a huge relief for the majority those whom Wayland doesn’t currently work well enough to be a daily driver.

Have you tried Ubuntu on Wayland yet? What’s your experience been like? Let us (and other readers) know by sharing your take in the comments below.