X-infterfaced Linux has been failing to make a dent in end user space for two decades. Non-X unices have been highly successful in end user space (various Aplle and Goodle offerings, not to mention set top boxes etc.)

I don't necessarily think Wayland is going to set the world on fire, but the urge to dump X is based on a solid inference.

There are too many factors at work to make that kind of broad statement. Correlation not causation etc. etc.

I think it's that kind of short sighted jumping to conclusions that brought us train wrecks like Windows 8 and Gnome 3. Someone looked around, noticed touch interfaces on iOS and Android devices were selling like hotcakes while traditional PC sales were slumping, and decided clearly the only logical conclusion is to put a touch based interface on a non-touch desktop computer.

You can have my mouse when you pry it out of my cold dead fingers, stay the hell away from my desktop experience.

Not making any causal statement, just pointing out the correlation.

Unity and Gnome 3 don't actually remove the complexity of a multilayered X environment, they just selectively attempt to hide some of it from the user. I don't think that's a good solution either technically or from a UX perspective.

I'm writing this from MATE by the way.

Well in fairness I'm not convinced that the issue is X, as much as the hordes of desktop environments developed on top of X.

But even without that, the currently-available DEs are good enough that if simple quality were the only thing holding Linux desktops back, they should be doing much better with market share. So I don't think that is the only issue.

X has a warm place in my heart and has ever since I first logged into my high school's SGI workstation that students Weren't Supposed to Use. However, the multilayering approach encouraged/required by X is a vector for an awful lot of subtle bugs and UX inconsistencies.

I don't think it's the only thing holding The Year of the Linux Desktop back, but successful end-user systems all have monolithic graphical user environments, and [GNU/X/]Linux has this bric-a-brac tower of Babel. Attempts to rationalize the tower post-hoc, even with extreme prejudice like Gnome 3, are going to be less effective than building from the ground up IMHO.