KDE marked its 30th anniversary on October 14 by releasing Plasma 6.8, dubbed the "30th Anniversary Edition," and debuting a movie. The update also retires Plasma's native X11 session support, a move the company describes as preparing Plasma for the future.
After 42 years in service, the X11 protocol is losing another major desktop environment. Plasma will fully adopt the Wayland system and end support for starting new X11 sessions. Users who stay on Plasma 6.7 will keep their existing sessions for now. The change was expected, as GNOME officially dropped X11 sessions by default in 2025.
Legacy X11 applications will still run through the XWayland compatibility layer, and KDE applications will continue to support X11 under other desktop environments. Users will not lose access to their older software.
Plasma 6.8 also brings several improvements. It offers expanded support for adding window decorations, such as shadows and rounded corners, to third-party apps, along with a more streamlined Union theming system. Nvidia triple buffering is now enabled by default, and Kup, KDE's backup utility, is integrated into Plasma. A new command-line tool, kscreenctl, lets power users adjust display configurations.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing