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KDE Marks 30 Years With Plasma 6.8, Officially Retires X11 Support

Confirmed1 source · Oct 15, 2026

On its 30th anniversary, KDE released Plasma 6.8 and ended native X11 session support, fully pivoting to Wayland.

KDE Marks 30 Years With Plasma 6.8, Officially Retires X11 Support
Image via Ars Technica

What happened

KDE announced Plasma 6.8 on October 14, marking the developer community's 30th anniversary. The update retires Plasma's native X11 session support, completing a transition to the Wayland display protocol. Legacy X11 applications will continue to work through the XWayland compatibility layer, and KDE applications will retain X11 support under other desktop environments. Plasma 6.8 introduces window decoration improvements for third-party apps, a streamlined Union theming system, Nvidia triple buffering enabled by default, Kup backup integration, and kscreenctl command-line utility for display configuration.

Context

The X11 protocol, which has served for 42 years, is losing another major desktop environment adopter. This move aligns with broader industry direction—GNOME officially drops X11 sessions by default in 2025. Users remaining on Plasma 6.7 retain their existing X11 sessions; migration to Wayland is not forced immediately. The retirement reflects maturation of Wayland as a viable successor and signals accelerating industry transition away from legacy display infrastructure.