Maybe it is me misunderstanding things, but Wayland and X11 are not technologies in contrast with each other.<p>Wayland is a glorified and up-to-date framebuffer and input system, X11 is a library that draws shapes and is responsible for delivering input from the user to the correct application.<p>I think the current situation is confusing because current X11 implementations not only do what X11 is meant to do, but they also need a way to push pixels to the framebuffer and listen to keystrokes. Basically X servers needed their own way to talk to the graphic card and they implemented it (decades ago). That part is almost completely independent from the protocol that draws shapes and routes input to applications. What Wayland is replacing is _that_ part, the part that deals with the framebuffer (that in the modern times is no longer a simple strip of memory region with RGB pixel data).<p>In the end we will have Wayland as the only owner of the graphic device and many clients, one of which will be the X server. When they say "client-side decoration" they are referring to the status quo: the Wayland client called X11 will draw the decorations (asking the WM to do that); nothing different from what we have now.<p>Once Wayland will be stable there will be other direct clients that will want to bypass X11: games probably, but also other multi-platform toolkit like Qt. And X12, eventually ;)<p>To me Wayland looks as the perfect example of how to move forward: make older unsustainable technologies coexist with newer technologies.