KDE Marks 30 Years With Plasma 6.8 Release, Bids Farewell to X11

KDE marked its 30th anniversary on October 14 with the release of Plasma 6.8, the debut of a documentary, and the retirement of its native X11 session support. The new Plasma 6.8, referred to as the "30th Anniversary Edition," is designed to prepare the desktop environment for future advancements. While X11 applications will continue to function via the XWayland compatibility layer, Plasma is fully transitioning to the Wayland system, ending support for starting new X11 sessions. This move follows a similar decision by GNOME in 2025. Plasma 6.8 introduces enhancements such as increased support for adding window decorations to third-party applications, an updated Union theming system, Nvidia triple buffering enabled by default, integrated Kup backup utility, and a new command-line utility, kscreenctl, for display configuration. The System Monitor has also been revamped, offering users a graphical interface to pin processes to specific CPU cores. For homelabbers, Plasma's remote desktop server has been updated with features like clipboard synchronization, an "Exclusive Mode" for display control, and adaptive remote streaming for unstable networks. Alongside the software release, the KDE team launched "The KDE Documentary — A Story of Free Software Underdogs."