Wayland strikes back

The headline new feature in Ubuntu 21.04 is that Wayland has been restored as the default windowing system. After one previous failed attempt to replace the ageing – if trusty – Xorg server back in Ubuntu 17.10, the folk at Canonical hope that second time’s a charm and have given themselves a year to make this attempt stick before the next LTS is released.

So, what exactly does a display server do? It provides your PC with the means to run graphical environments powered by desktops like GNOME, enabling you to point and click rather than spend all your life at the command line. Think of it as a connecting