Going all-in on a Wayland future
Well folks, it’s the beginning of a new era: after nearly three decades of KDE desktop environments running on X11, the future KDE Plasma 6.8 release will be Wayland-exclusive! Support for X11 applications will be fully entrusted to Xwayland, and the Plasma X11 session will no longer be included.
For most users, this will have no immediate impact. The vast majority of our users are already using the Wayland session, it’s the default on most distributions, and some of them have already dropped — or are planning to drop — the Plasma X11 session independently of what we decide.
In the longer term, this change opens up new opportunities for features, optimizations, and speed of development.
Because we’re certain that many people will have questions about this change, the Plasma team has prepared the following FAQ:
Plasma 6.8 means the X11 session will be supported by KDE until…?
The Plasma X11 session will be supported by KDE into early 2027.
We cannot provide a specific date, as we’re exploring the possibility of shipping some extra bug-fix releases for Plasma 6.7. The exact timing of the last one will only be known when we get closer to its actual release, which we expect will be sometime in early 2027.
What if I still really need X11?
This is a perfect use case for long term support (LTS) distributions shipping older versions of Plasma. For example, AlmaLinux 9 includes the Plasma X11 session and will be supported until sometime in 2032.
Will X11 applications still work?
Outside of rare special cases, yes, they will still work using the Xwayland compatibility layer. It does a great job of providing compatibility for most X11 applications, and we provide several additional compatibility features on top, namely improved support for fractional scaling and (opt-in) backwards compatibility with X11 global shortcuts and input emulation.
In certain cases, 3rd-party applications doing specialized tasks like taking screenshots or screencasting need to be adjusted to work as expected on Wayland. Most have already done so, and the remaining ones are making progress all the time.
Does X11 forwarding still work?
Yes, Xwayland supports it. Waypipe exists for similar functionality in Wayland native applications as well.
Can I still run KDE applications on X11 in another desktop environment?
Yes. There are currently no plans to drop X11 support in KDE applications outside of Plasma.
This change only concerns Plasma’s X11 login session, which is what’s going away.
What about gaming?
Games run better than ever on the Wayland session! Adaptive sync, optional tearing, and high-refresh-rate multi-monitor setups are all supported out of the box. HDR gaming works with some additional setup, too!
What about NVIDIA GPUs?
While Wayland support in the proprietary NVIDIA driver was quite rocky a few years ago, it has matured tremendously. Graphics cards still supported by the manufacturer work just fine nowadays, and for very old NVIDIA GPUs, the open source Nouveau driver can be used instead.
What about accessibility?
Accessibility is a very broad topic, so it’s hard to make any definite statements, but we’re generally on par with the X11 session. All the basics already work as expected, including screen readers, sticky/slow/bounce keys, zooming in, and so on.
Some things are better, like touchpad gestures for adjusting the zoom level, and applying systemwide color filters to correct for colorblindness. And even more improvements are expected by the time Plasma 6.8 rolls around.
However, accessibility features provided by third-party applications may be worse in some aspects. Please open a bug report if you have any special requirements that we don’t cover yet! This is an active topic we’re very interested in improving.
What about automation?
Many tools can be used for automation in the Wayland session; for example wl-copy/wl-paste, ydotool, kdotool, kscreen-doctor, and the plasma-apply-* tools. Generally Plasma is extensible enough that you can add what’s still missing yourself, for example through KWin scripts or plugins.
What about the Significant Known Issues?
While we can’t promise all problems will be completely gone (some depend on application support), we’re actively working on addressing the last stragglers on that Wiki page.
Some of them are really close to being fixed; for example, the issues around output mirroring will be gone in Plasma 6.6. Session restore and remembering window positions are also being actively worked on.
What about Plasma on the BSDs?
FreeBSD is already shipping a working Wayland session, so there should be no upstream problems on that front. If there are any remaining issues we can help with upstream, please reach out to us!
What about the kwin_wayland and kwin_x11 split?
In Plasma 6.4, we split KWin into separate X11 and Wayland versions. This allowed KWin to go all-in on Wayland earlier, without being held up so much with legacy support for X11. For users with remaining edge-case requirements for X11, we put in the extra effort to keep X11 support for the rest of the desktop since then.
While the split helped a lot, KWin is only one piece of the puzzle. The Plasma desktop as a whole has many places where development is held back by the need to support the lowest common denominator of the two window systems.
The bottom line
This is happening because we believe that eventually dropping the Plasma X11 session will allow us to move faster to improve stability and functionality for the majority of our users — who are already using Wayland.
If we want to keep producing the best free desktop out there, we have to be nimble enough to adapt to a rapidly changing environment with many opportunities, without the need to drag forward legacy support that holds back a great deal of work.
The Wayland transition has been long, and at times painful. But we’re very close to the finish line. Passing it will unlock a lot of positive changes over the next few years that we think folks are going to appreciate!
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