My understanding of a "distro" is as being a curated collection of components from lots of different sources which have been re-compiled and tested to work together. At its core is always a specific version of Linux and then the userland packages that users may choose to install.

The most fundamental alternative would be to build the core Linux system, e.g. following the Linux from Scratch process and then downloading each application from its repository and compiling, installing and configuring. That too is a valid choice but one that some of us don't care to indulge in.

> Total or free?

Total. You can change the default to any % or GiB, but I couldn't figure out how to apply that to /etc/tmpfiles.d, had to switch to fstab.

Wayland is the mass adoption stage, I've been running it for years.

Since its a protocol it does depend on what compositor you use. KDE Plasma and GNOME are very mature, GNOME was a little funkier with fractional scaling last I tried.

Thanks for sharing your perspective—that’s a completely reasonable approach, especially for a daily workhorse setup like yours.

Wayland is slowly becoming more mature across major desktop environments, but you're right to be cautious. In Debian 13 (Trixie), Wayland is the default session for GNOME, and the experience has definitely improved compared to earlier releases. That said, X11 is still available and officially supported, so you’re not forced to switch.

A few practical updates:

Firefox, Chromium, and most GTK4 apps now run well under Wayland.

NVIDIA proprietary driver support under Wayland has improved, though still not flawless—especially with multiple monitors or screen recording.

Screen sharing on Wayland is finally usable in tools like OBS and Zoom with PipeWire.

Some DEs like KDE Plasma 6 (not in Debian 13 by default) have arguably reached parity, but GNOME on Wayland in Debian 13 is getting very close for many workflows.

If you don’t rely on niche legacy apps or certain X-based workflows (like manual xrandr configurations or very custom keybind setups), you could try Wayland on a secondary user session just to test it out.

But to answer your question directly: it’s not bleeding edge anymore, but maybe not quite “boring stable” either, depending on your hardware and use case. I'd say Debian 14 might be the milestone where it's ready for everyone by default without any caveats.

I've been running Wayland under KDE for years now, before j had even learned what a display server is