The good old Wayland, I mean it's not that old, but yeah, the good old Wayland.
Those who are out there who don't know about Wayland, apologies to them, but also congrats, because for you all to use Linux, what a display protocol is, I mean, now don't search what a display protocol is, just hear me out, okay?
Unless and until you use Arch Linux (I use Arch BTW), you have no idea what a display protocol is. If you use Ubuntu or Linux Mint, you just install it and use it, and flex to your friends about how you are the coolest of them all.
So, what is the deal with Wayland? And what is even a display protocol? Let's get to know about it, shall we?
Display protocol in Linux is a set of rules. I mean, let's assume I am a display protocol and you are, let's see, okay, you are Firefox, a browser.
You ask me to display the window frame (I suppose you know what a window frame is), I give you the exact location and set of rules to work with while displaying your window frame. A user clicks on a link, you tell me to update the window frame, and I do.
You see what is happening right now, I am controlling how data is being displayed, you control the data, but the job of displaying is mine.
This is how the display protocol works. A display protocol like Wayland provides a set of rules and techniques for clients like Firefox, kitty(terminal), and other GUI apps to display their content on the monitor.
There are mainly two types of display protocol that dominate the Linux universe, one is, of course, Wayland, and the other is X11.
You can consider X11 to be the granddaddy of the Linux display protocols. But now it is considered to be old and slow, though used widely and has still not given up.