The Wayland protocol follows a client/server model in which clients are the graphical applications requesting the display of pixel buffers on the screen, and the server, or compositor, is the service provider that controls the display of these buffers.

The Wayland compositor can be a Linux display server, an X application, or a special Wayland client. Weston is the reference Wayland compositor in the Wayland project. It is written in C and works with the Linux kernel APIs. It relies on evdev for the handling of input events.

Wayland uses Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) in the Linux kernel and does not need something like an X server. The client renders the window contents to a buffer shared with the compositor by itself, using a rendering library, or an engine like Qt or GTK+.

Wayland lacks the network transparency features of X, but it is likely that similar functionality will be added in the future. It also has better security features than X and is designed to provide confidentiality and integrity. Wayland does not allow applications to look at the input of other programs, capture other input events, or generate fake input events. It also makes a better job of protecting Window outputs. However, this also means that it currently offers no way to provide some of the features we are used to in desktop X systems like screen capturing, or features common in accessibility programs.

Being lighter and more secure than X.Org, Wayland is better suited to use with embedded systems. If needed, X.Org can run as a client of Wayland for backwards compatibility. However, Wayland is not as established as X11 and Wayland-based images in Poky do not receive as much community attention as the X11-based ones.