On the occasion of software developer KDE’s 30th anniversary on October 14, the company released Plasma 6.8, released a movie, and retired Plasma’s native X11 session support. KDE’s announcement calls the new Plasma 6.8 the “30th Anniversary Edition” and describes the update as preparing Plasma for the future. Legacy X11 applications will continue to work through the XWayland compatibility layer, and KDE applications will also continue to support X11 in other desktop environments.
After 42 years in service, the X11 protocol is losing another important desktop environment. Plasma will fully adopt the Wayland system and enable support for starting new X11 sessions in Plasma. Users who choose to stay on Plasma 6.7 will keep their existing sessions for now. The move was expected, as GNOME will officially remove X11 sessions by default in 2025.
The new Plasma 6.8 brings many improvements, including greater support for adding window decorations (such as shadows and rounded corners) to third-party applications and a more optimized Union theme system. Other notable additions include Nvidia triple buffering enabled by default, Kup backup integration (KDE’s backup utility, now integrated into Plasma), and kscreenctla command line utility that allows advanced users to adjust display settings.
