r/kde • u/m_sniffles_esq • 1d ago
News KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, remote upgrades, and an X11 farewell - Ars
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/kde-turns-30-with-plasma-6-8-remote-upgrades-and-an-x11-farewell/58
u/HazelCuate 1d ago
Another nail in X11's coffin.
Good riddance
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u/torar9 1d ago
Should have happen much sooner. But I guess it's unrealistic when even Steam, the most used platform recently adopted 64 bit clients in beta. It will probably take another years for a Wayland client to land.
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u/burning_iceman 1d ago edited 1d ago
They're advertising it as 64 bit but it still relies on 32 bit processes (you can start the steam client without 32 bit libs but you cannot start any game - even 64 bit games).
Steam Wayland support depends on CEF getting their support done. Maybe KDE dropping X11 will push that forwards.
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u/Subject-Leather-7399 1d ago edited 1d ago
Applications being unable to reposition their own Windows on Wayland is an aberration.
For 3 of my most used applications, I had to spend multiple days writing a kwin script I have bound to global shortcuts in order to set the windows position for them. If I open the app or switch between window layouts, it opens the windows on top of each other.
For example, I use GIMP in "multi-window mode" because I want the image in fullscreen on the main monitor and all of the other windows on the other monitor. The script I wrote repositions the windows for each of the workflow layouts. It is not possible to do that in "single-window" mode because you can't maximize an application over multiple monitors on Wayland.
In addition to the script I had to make window rules to make sure the fullscreen presentation window would be on the correct monitor and the application on the other monitor. Same for mplayer as the controls are in a separate window and I want them on a different monitor when I play a video fullscreen.
Of course, Wayland is "ready". I use it because I knew many months ago it would be the only supported path, but it is infuriating.
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u/bawng 1d ago
Reeeeeeeeeeeee XLibre something something wokeeee
/s
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u/sonicrules11 1d ago
im aware its a shitpost but whats this related to?
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u/bawng 21h ago
The community around XLibre for some reason are very vocal around Wayland somehow being a product of woke culture.
Today the discussion has pretty much died out since no one cares about them, but back when the fork happened they were all over these threads complaining about RedHat not allowing dissenting opinion because they're woke, etc.
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u/se_spider 1d ago
Having issue with the "Icons-and-Text Task Manager" basically forcing the "Keep launchers separate" behavior even though it's not enabled.
This release has so many issues, including color accuracy setting and baloo.
-5
u/Defiant-Rip-1897 1d ago
While I haven't had any real issues with Wayland on my more modern PC, I still run into performance problems on older or less powerful hardware, particularly my 2011 iMac and Raspberry Pi 5. Switching those machines back to X11 (or even, gasp, XLibre!) has noticeably improved performance in my experience.
That's why I'm glad projects like SonicDE and XLibre exist. I understand why KDE wants to move forward with Wayland, and I don't necessarily disagree with that direction, but I also think there's value in keeping alternatives alive, especially for people with older hardware or use cases where Wayland still falls short.
What I find interesting is the timing of KDE's decision to drop the X11 session with Plasma 6.8. I know this has been planned for some time, but I wonder why they chose to make such a significant change in the middle of the Plasma 6.x release cycle, rather than saving it for something like Plasma 7.0. Especially considering Kubuntu 26.10 is shipping with Plasma 6.7, it feels like the sort of change that might have made more sense as part of a major version transition. But hey, I'm not the one making those decisions!
On a somewhat related note, I found KDE's 30th-anniversary documentary fascinating. I actually hadn't realized just how much of a role Qt's original licensing situation played in the creation of GNOME. Looking back, I wonder whether KDE and Trolltech could have reached an agreement earlier in development and perhaps avoided some of the controversy surrounding KDE at the time.
From what I understand, the agreement they eventually established through the KDE Free Qt Foundation is pretty reasonable. It essentially guarantees that Qt remains available under free software licenses, and if the current owner of Trolletch/Qt stops fulfilling certain obligations, the foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license. In other words, the community would have a way to continue developing Qt independently if things ever went sideways.
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u/crystalchuck 1d ago
If you still want to use X, just use regular old xorg instead of Xlibre. It's still being maintained (the notion that it's abandoned is wrong) and is what everyone will actually be targeting.
-2
u/Defiant-Rip-1897 1d ago
My understanding is that it is in maintenance mode, meaning no updates or maintenance. I was looking into using GhostBSD, which relies on xlibre.
Politics-aside, are there issues with xlibre?
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u/Booty_Bumping 1d ago edited 1d ago
Xorg still gets critical bugfixes, you can keep using it. But architectural flaws will never be fixed.
The problem with XLibre is that it gets a constant stream of broken crap added to it. It is the culmination of a bunch of terrible ideas (like Xnamespace, or its broken TearFree mode) that were rejected by Xorg for good reasons over the years. It will (and already has) completely fracture the X ecosystem in a bad way, much worse than Xorg's natural death would have.
You should absolutely avoid projects like GhostBSD that default to XLibre. They are not serious projects, and are essentially the polar opposite of, e.g. OpenBSD who maintains the widely respected Xenocara soft-fork patches for adapting and hardening Xorg to the BSD ecosystem.
(GhostBSD in particular has been a project with rather questionable decisionmaking even back when it was called PC-BSD -- IIRC its package manager was quite smelly and its stability suffered a lot. They were always after making it as shiny as possible without the underlying technical work to back it up.)
One of these unserious projects, Artix, eventually came to their senses and ran away from it because it broke constantly. The XLibre community reacted to this not by improving their code, but by hurling death threats.
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u/crystalchuck 23h ago
It is maintained and receives a steady trickle of fixes – no feature updates though, as it should be
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