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Nowadays it's just a clunky mess of direct rendering interfaces bolted on top of legacy cruft from a long gone era. It's complex and inefficient.
If Wayland were such a great improvement overall that it didn't incur it's own clunky tax, then the situation might be different. On the contrary, Wayland is not only clunky but fragmented as well; hacks and workarounds for one compositor don't necessarily work for another, so if I switched to it I would be faced with the prospect of either figuring out numerous systems or picking one of them blind and hoping for the best.
Absolutely feel the same way, I don't wanna work on my tools, I wanna work on my work.
I picked up Linux because I was an enthusiast. Now I use it because Windows became unusable and Linux is actually the best option on the desktop. But I don't care about X11 or Wayland, I just want things to work without fuss - and they mostly do through decades of churn and cruft. In my world legacy cruft is vastly preferable to new problems.
I am curious to know why you decided to choose linux over netbsd if that is your opinion.
You don't really have to in practice if you aren't a tinkerer. Most distros do the whole thing for you and appart from having a smoother desktop, you wouldn't even know you are using wayland on Gnome or KDE.
In fact only the tinkerers can be annoyed by the switch because they are the ones using a non distro polished setup.
I like new mode much better: when you change from terminal to terminal you have all the same programs running on "server" without restart. I could work on my Windows workstation locally, go to my office, attach back to workstation and everything works, then I could go to vacation to India and connect to same workstation from my phone (!) and still programs runs without restart.
X11 model with "RPC display server" when you cannot re-attach same clients to new display server without restart or some proxies, which you need to run in advance, is not so convenient, IMHO. VNC was invented to remedy this problem. And VNC is simple pixel buffer, not high-level controls or X11 protocol in any way.
It is different models: X11 assume you have only one terminal (effectively client, but "server" in X11 parlance) and many system to run software (effectively servers, but "client" in X11 parlance).
VNC/RDP works other way around: one server, which runs all you programs, and you can attach to it from different terminals/clients.
It is not exactly so, as RDP can forward only some programs (windows) and not full screen, of course, but close enough.
I cannot speak for everybody, but for me (and my friends with whom I discussed this) second use case is much more important, than first one.
About speed: maybe, with 10Mbit Ethernet it was true. But now I could work with Photoshop (!) from my office (client) on my home workstation (server) via RDP and don't notice delays. Yes, I have 1000/100Mbit asymmetric connection at home and I don't know what is used by my office. One time I've forgot that it is RDP to my home sysmtem and started Youtube video. I was surprised, that video and sound is slightly off-sync, and only after that recognized that it is RDP, not local browser!
Much worse connection is enough for less demanding tasks, I've worked with "normal" not graphics-heavy programs via 4G connection in India (my home system is in the Netherlands) and it was not painful. Yes, there was perceivable delay, but for task like "Open PDF, open browser, fill form on site by copy-n-pasting strings from PDF, submitting form and authorize with 2FA from phone" it was perfectly Ok.
But, yes, if you need to assemble 10 windows from 10 remote machines on one screen, X11 is the best.
RDP actually delivers on the promise of local-feeling remote apps.
(The revenge of the UNIX-HATERS is that Microsoft designed a better shell than sh (PowerShell), a better X than X (RDP), and a better Emacs than Emacs (Visual Studio Code).)
VNC really sucked on the other hand, not being able to transparently share single windows (at least I never figured out how to), some windows would fail to refresh and I would need to drag them around to get them to redraw, copy and paste was always a pain, sometimes inputs not registering properly.
To be fair to VNC though, over the internet plain X11 forwarding really sucked (latency is the real killer here) and VNC won out there. Unless one was using NX proxy, then it blew VNC out of the water (while using X11 on both ends). Only RDP was somewhat on par with NX over the internet, but locally still beaten by X11.
And for me inability to detach whole session from one server (in X11 terms) and attach to another is showstopper.
X11 needed something like console "screen"/"tmux" from the very beginning, in the core protocol, IMHO. Not for multiplexing of workspaces or desktops, but for this session re-attaching.
One thing to note is that the Steam Deck only uses Wayland for its fullscreen gaming mode. When you exit to its desktop mode (meant for running non-Steam software), it switches to X11.
E.g. Linux mobile devices also usually "successfully" utilized Wayland, but failed big time in market share against whatever Android uses. The only thing this may prove is that Android is more popular.
Btw I take screenshots often w gnome+wayland, it just works so I don’t even know how it’s implemented. Not sure if you were making a Wayland jab.
The loyal opposition seems vastly more vocal & adamant. Endless haters, endless griping, endless whining, while a lot of people are doing just fine & getting along & getting on with things.