KDE has announced that it will go Wayland-only in a future release of Plasma Desktop. It will not support X11 sessions from 2027.
KDE Plasma 6, which was released in February 2024, switched from X11 to enable Wayland as the default display server. Initially, the developers did not plan to remove X11/Kwin before Plasma 7, however the codebases of Kwin were split this year, one for X11 and the other for Wayland.
(Image via KDE)
Now, KDE has announced that Xorg/X11 will be ditched completely in the future. The plans are to make Wayland exclusive in Plasma 6.8. That's still far away. For context, the current version is KDE Plasma 6.5, which was released in October 2025, and supports X11 sessions. KDE says LTS distributions that ship with older versions of Plasma will be ideal for users who need X11 support.
But, you can use the Xwayland compatibility layer to run X11 apps, though screenshots/screencasting apps may need some additional tweaks. KDE apps will still support X11 as well. The official article highlights the improvements of Wayland such as support for accessibility tools like screen readers, sticky & bounce keys, zoom controls, a better gaming experience, Adaptive sync, optional tearing, and high-refresh-rate multi-monitor setups, and HDR (with tweaks). It also noted that NVIDIA drivers for Linux have improved considerably, and older GPUs can use the open source Nouveau driver if required.
Games run fine on Linux with Proton, and big YouTube channels are ditching Windows for their videos. Of course, there is the Steam Machine, which runs on the Arch-based SteamOS3, it is coming in early 2026.
KDE says a vast majority of Plasma users are already using the Wayland session, it’s the default on most distributions. KDE has its own distro too, but it's still in alpha. In case you didn't know, GNOME dropped support for X11 in GNOME 49, but added it back later. It is going away in GNOME 50. However, some distros have already stopped supporting Xorg. Fedora 43 has already ditched X11 in favor of Wayland display server as the only option. Ubuntu 25.10 doesn't support X11 session, neither does Kubuntu 25.10 which uses KDE Plasma. The Linux Mint team is also working on improving Wayland support in Mint 22.3, which is expected to be released in December 2025.
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