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I am running Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS, and would like to use Waydroid, which requires Wayland.

When I run waydroid first-launch, I get:

Starting waydroid session
WAYLAND_DISPLAY is not set, defaulting to "wayland-0"
Wayland socket '/run/user/1000/wayland-0' doesn't exist; are you running a Wayland compositor?

That implies my system is not running Wayland. Based on what I could find online, Ubuntu 24.04 should use Wayland by default, but I have no idea if Ubuntu MATE is different here. Also, the system was upgraded from Ubuntu MATE 14.10 to 15.04, then 15.10, then 16.04 LTS, and from then on from each LTS to the next, and is now at 24.04.

Should Ubuntu MATE 24.04 be running Wayland by default? How can I determine if my system is actually running Wayland? If it is not, how can I get support for Wayland (in particular Waydroid) on Ubuntu MATE 24.04?

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    Yes MATE (still using GTK3 which GNOME hasn't used for some releases now as it is GTK4*) is still an Xorg desktop; so NO Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS should not be using Wayland. Last I heard was Ubuntu MATE 26.04 may offer a Wayland option; though some compositor work has been done to let Xorg desktops run via XWayland. github.com/mate-desktop/mate-wayland-session or Miracle-DM etc... Commented Jul 19, 2025 at 9:33
  • If you require Wayland, prefer moving to a desktop that is already on Wayland. With time, Mate will follow (or it will become obsolete) Commented Jul 20, 2025 at 10:43

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Apparently Ubuntu MATE is still on Xorg as of 24.04.

The quickest way to get Wayland (to the point of being able to run Waydroid) is to install weston (can be done via apt).

Launch Weston (needs to be done from the terminal as there is no launcher entry, but you can create one).

Run export WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1 (this is the display which Weston uses; Waydroid will read that variable; if not found, it will default to wayland-0 and exit if no display exists there). Then run Waydroid normally.

Or run WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1 waydroid ARGS (replacing ARGS with first-launch for the first launch, show-full-ui on subsequent launches).

Caveat: Weston runs in a window, and Waydroid doesn’t seem to handle screen resize operations properly – if the window changes size, Waydroid will lose its display connection and disappear from the screen (although it remains running).

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