Security Model: Wayland Vs. Xorg in Linux

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

justinludwig

4 points

4 comments

openlib.ioTechstory

calmpositive

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LinuxWaylandXorgSecurity

Key topics

Linux

Wayland

Xorg

Security

The article compares the security models of Wayland and Xorg in Linux, sparking a discussion on their relative security benefits and trade-offs.

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01Story posted
Oct 6, 2025 at 4:36 PM EDT
3 months ago
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Discussion (4 comments)

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josephcsible

3 months ago

1 reply

Only programs running as you can access your X server. If a program running as you is malicious, it can steal all of your data and do whatever else you can do, without needing to involve your display server. The only thing Wayland's "security" actually prohibits is legitimate programs like xrdp.

6SixTy

3 months ago

1 reply

RDP is functionality that has to be built into the compositor, rather than a pretty integral part of X itself. WSLg (Windows Subsystem for Linux [2] GUI) works via RDP, and it's Wayland only too.

josephcsible

3 months ago

> RDP is functionality that has to be built into the compositor, rather than a pretty integral part of X itself.

But that's not a good thing. Code should be able to be written once and reused, not rewritten for every single compositor, which in practice means every single DE and then some.

nacozarina

3 months ago

that website has a bad bounce on ios

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ID: 45496029Type: storyLast synced: 11/17/2025, 11:07:12 AM

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