this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Honestly, not much changed since GNOME 40.
Is it a bad thing? No
Do I want more changes? Also no
The only thing missing from GNOME for me is proper dynamic tiling. I'm trying Forge extension, but it feels clunky
Dropping X11 seems huge.
How many people were using X11 on GNOME?
Yes, it's technically a huge change, but regular user won't see a difference
Removing technical debts cannot be overestimated.
Yeah forge is what I use too and it’s definitely a little clunky. PaperWM was decent last time I tried it too (but still a little clunky)
Except for removing 40% of the code base in this release.
Is that % real? That’s impressive. Was it the removal of X11? That should make the DE feel lighter, hopefully.
GNOME has a bunch of legacy code… it’s only of the things that has me interested in Cosmic OS. That and Rust, lol.
Yes, that 40% comes from the removal of X11 support.
I don't know if any of that code even ran in a Wayland session, and makes a difference.
But what it does is take 40% load of the maintainers who can invest their time elsewhere now.
Fair, I just find that number super high, 40%. Is that official, or an estimate from you?
I think they just disabled the session since the last version of GNOME and now they removing the code completely, but you’re absolutely right, it is good that the devs can now move on from maintaining that old code to focusing exclusively on Wayland. I’m more excited about this update now, thank you!
I remember reading it's 40% in an article, but now I can't find it anymore, so take it with a grain of salt.
From a non techical user perspective.
I used unmodified GNOME 40 and 49 for a week. There were few changes, I could absolutely see myself using the older version and not missing much.
In my opinion GNOME 4X is as good as linux DEs get. I would like to see some popular extensions getting official support and native dynamic tiling, but besides that it's hard to see room for improvement.
Removing X11 is a big deal, but most users won't see it as such.
Mosaicwm is great, even if still on early development.
I must check it out, thanks
That is likely to come now that they have removed all support for X11. Apparently the legacy code was preventing properly integrating a tiling system.
Did you ever use Material Shell?