KDE Plasma 6.8 removes Plasma X11 sessions and leaves X11 apps to XWayland

The line in LWN's note is between a session and an application. Plasma 6.8 drops support for Plasma X11 sessions ^[6]. X11 applications are still supported through XWayland ^[8]. LWN also quotes KDE as saying its own applications will keep supporting X11 "for the foreseeable future" ^[9].

That promise covers application support. LWN's note does not say how tools that depend on the X11 session itself behave under XWayland, and the Phoronix summary lists no X11 items at all ^[5].

In our view, the test for any workflow is simple. It carries over cleanly only if every piece of it is an X11 application. Anything that relied on the session as such sits outside what KDE has said it will support ^[8][9].

Staying on an X11 session therefore means staying on a release older than 6.8 ^[6]. The removal was announced in November 2025, so the notice period was not short ^[7]. LWN points readers to the KDE wiki for user-facing changes and to a changelog covering everything since Plasma 6.7.5 ^[12].

Phoronix describes the rest of the release as mostly Wayland work. Its list includes vRAM usage optimizations, dwell clicker support on Wayland, Wayland commit-timing protocol support for KWin, multi-GPU handling improvements and a new kscreenctl tool ^[5]. Phoronix says there has been "a lot of polishing and fine tuning" from the Wayland angle ^[10]. Its summary does not say which of those items depend on the X11 removal.

The non-Wayland additions are small by comparison. The Kup backup tool is now included as part of Plasma ^[3]. Spectacle screen recordings can include system audio and microphone input ^[4].

One aside, from the project's own history. In the email that announced the project, Matthias Ettrich wrote that "Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody needs if we could offer a real GUI" ^[11]. The release timed to that email's 30th anniversary removes the X11 session ^[1][6].