> I'm still a novice, but will all X programs need to be converted?

No. Because Wayland is fundamentally different from X the following won't ever work:

* Window managers

* Programs that need to know their absolute window coordinates

* Windows that want to draw to the root window

* Programs that want to capture the screen via XGetImage()

> * Programs that need to know their absolute window coordinates

> * Windows that want to draw to the root window

Gnome certainly won't support it, but in principle a compositor could expose that functionality.

> * Programs that want to capture the screen via XGetImage()

Yeah, doing anything via XAnything() only works on X. So you replace XAnything() by somethingElse().

With XWayland there is no urgent need for conversion. And "a lot of applications that just wouldn't load" sounds pretty fishy to begin with.

Old drivers have issues with XWayland. There's nothing fishy about that statement whatsoever. Hell, NVidia only JUST got XWayland working, though that's probably more an issue of corporate stubbornness.

I think NVidia have every incentive to oppose Wayland. The graphics and post-production studio market mostly uses NVidia Quadro cards on linux workstations. They choose NVidia because only NVidia has a fast, stable, minimal-artifact implementation of X11. Being able to code drivers for X11's crazy architecture is actually a competitive advantage.

Is it still a competitive advantage if nobody wants X11 anymore, though?

> Will there ever be a good way to run things like dmenu on Wayland?

I use the wofi which is the rofi replacement. Page 'i3 Migration Guide' [1] from the Sway wiki lists some dmenu replacements (bemenu, fuzzel, gmenu, wldash)

[1] https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/i3-Migration-Guide