KDE hits 30, decides it's time to move out of the X11 era

After 30 years, KDE has decided it's time to bid farewell to the X11 era. The newly released KDE Plasma 6.8 is only compatible with Wayland, although it still allows X11 applications to run through XWayland. KWin now handles both window management and display server duties, which means X11-based screen-recording tools will no longer function properly.

Users can no longer shade windows or roll them up into the title bar, and restoring saved sessions may behave differently. The Plasma 6.8 release includes various enhancements, such as the ability for the Spectacle screenshot tool to capture system audio and microphone input. KDE's browser integration now supports the Flatpak version of Microsoft's Edge browser, and GTK2 applications see improved dark-theme matching.

Internationalization has improved as well, with support for the Bikram Sambat calendar and Amharic in the on-screen keyboard. The System Monitor app now tracks VRAM usage and can pin tasks to specific CPU cores. Plasma 6.8 also offers better multi-monitor handling with color-coded screens by make and model. There are additional authentication options in KDE's VPN support and better handling of triple-buffered output on Nvidia GPUs.

The built-in Remote Desktop server, based on KRdp, has been improved to be faster and able to adapt to slower connections. However, some users may not be pleased with the change, as the Wayland-only session requires alternatives to remote-access tools that depend on an X11 desktop session. KDE's internal metrics show that more than 95 percent of Plasma 6.6 users were already running Wayland in June, with overall adoption around 76 percent.