Should I uninstall xorg-server after switching to wayland

[pixel]

As in title. Or should I keep it? And is it even possible? Xwayland and xorg-server have as a dependency xorg-server-common.

Doesn’t make any difference from security point of view if I have xorg installed or not if I am on wayland session? Can some attacker edit some files to make some apps run as xorg within wayland session in order to get what I type?

Is there a way to list apps that use xwayland instead of wayland? If there are only some less relevant I could consider getting rid of xwayland completely. But does it make any sense?

[Mirdarthos]

Hi @pixel,

Personally I think it’s fine as it is. I don’t think there’s reason to worry.

However, you can see what depends on the xorg-server package, and decide for yourself if you want to keep it or not:

$ pacman -Sii xorg-server
[...]
Required By     : cl-clx  gdm  glava  klipperscreen  lightdm  lightdm-slick-greeter  lxdm  lxdm-gtk3  nvidia-390xx-utils  nvidia-470xx-utils  plan9port  sddm  sx
[...]

Hope this helps!

[ben75]

You can’t delete xorg-server or xwayland because your desktop environment depends on both of them.

[pixel]

@ben75

your desktop environment depends on both of them.

Not particular apps but DE, even on wayland session? In what way? I see sddm is given as a dependency, so not only apps. But I believe this is transition period and eventually all DE components will be purely wayland. Is that correct?

[Nachlese]

This transition period started years ago and will last another decade at least.

@pixel

Can some attacker edit some files to make some apps run as xorg within wayland session in order to get what I type?

Everything is possible, but that doesn’t mean it is likely.
Some “attacker” could do anything - they can use whatever means.
It is not dependent on whether these binaries exist on your system or not.

a quote from somewhere on the internet that came to mind when reading this:

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

[ben75]

@Nachlese

a quote from somewhere on the internet

That’s a quote from a Nirvana song.

[soundofthunder]

@ben75

That’s a quote from a Nirvana song.

I have never understood enough words in a Nirvana song to extract a quote from one.

[scotty65]

@ben75

@Nachlese

a quote from somewhere on the internet

That’s a quote from a Nirvana song.

Originally from the 1961 novel, Catch-22 (author: Joseph Heller).

[cscs]

“Misquotation is a longstanding internet tradition”

• Albert Einstein

---

Back on track - to the title query;
No you cannot/shouldn’t remove xorg-server.
At least not on KDE, not right now.
Its maybe possible - for example if you configure your SDDM to use wayland backend and do not rely on any xorg-xwayland applications. But currently that may be unlikely.
If any of this is not familiar to you then the answer is all the more obvious - no, not yet.