KDE marked its 30th anniversary by shipping Plasma 6.8, which abandons the X11 session entirely. KWin now handles both window management and display-server duties, and X11 applications run only through XWayland. That means old X11-era behaviors are gone, including direct window shading, X11 screen-recording tools, and letting applications place their own windows freely.
The release brings a long list of refinements rather than just removals. Spectacle can record system audio and microphone input in screen recordings, System Monitor tracks VRAM and can pin tasks to CPU cores, and multi-monitor setups now color-code identical displays. HDR support follows ICC profiles and understands Hybrid Log Gamma, while Nvidia GPUs get triple-buffered output for smoother animations. The built-in Remote Desktop server, based on KRdp, is faster, adaptive to slower connections, and has bidirectional clipboard support with an exclusive mode that locks the host screen.
KDE's internal metrics show more than 95 percent of Plasma 6.6 users were already on Wayland in June, so the shift is hardly a surprise. Still, some users are unhappy, and the SonicDE project aims to continue developing the X11-capable KWin from Plasma 6.7. Kubuntu 27.04, codenamed "Tenacious T-Rex," will include Plasma 6.8 when it arrives in April next year.