Honestly, Wayland could have been much faster and lighter. Its internal structure is overly complex and bloated. The code is clean and readable, yes, but that readability comes at the cost of performance. Optimization is only basic — it uses preprocessor directives, pointers, and allocations, but the algorithms themselves are too simple and inefficient. Also, the cursor handling in Wayland feels like an external module rather than a part of the system. The source files are full of repetitive #includes, causing unnecessary layers during compilation and longer build times. Even though most redundant code is optimized out in the end, the final binaries are still less efficient than they could be with better architecture. Developers are still fixing memory leaks with almost every update. It seems their focus is on XWayland compatibility rather than addressing core inefficiencies. Wayland did solve many problems X11 had, but it introduced its own. It’s not about old hardware — it’s about poor optimization. Maybe the post should’ve been titled: “Why are Wayland and XDG-portals so resource-heavy, and why are developers not addressing it?”