"The team behind the KDE Plasma desktop announced it is going all-in on a Wayland future. The Plasma version 6.8, "which we expect will be sometime in early 2027," will completely drop X11 support. You don't need to worry just yet. Plasma 6.5 appeared less than a month ago, and it's currently at version 6.5.3. That means there are the entire 6.6 and 6.7 release sequences to get through, which will probably take most of 2026 and some of 2027."
"This sets a time frame for KDE to catch up with GNOME, the other major FOSS desktop environment. The next release, GNOME 50, is set to go Wayland-only but it's not quite there yet. Although GNOME 49 - as found in Fedora 43 and Ubuntu 25.10 - disables the X11 login session by default, you can still reinstall it. GNOME developer Jordan Petridis predicted X11's removal from the code back in June, and the code change was merged earlier this month."
"We still often see reports of significant issues with Wayland, and to be fair, the KDE project maintains its own list. We've heard about problems with screenshots and screen sharing, remote control using VNC, saving and restoring window layouts, problems with touchscreen and trackpad gestures, as well as accessibility issues with speech recognition, screen readers, and more. However, the situation is improving. Some distros are making Wayland the default, leading to more people filing bugs and this helps to isolate the issues."
KDE Plasma will eliminate X11 support with Plasma 6.8, expected in early 2027, after the 6.6 and 6.7 release cycles. Plasma 6.5.3 is current, so the transition will span most of 2026 and into 2027. GNOME is also moving toward Wayland-only operation, with GNOME 49 disabling X11 by default and GNOME 50 slated to be Wayland-only. Wayland still has notable issues including screenshots, screen sharing, VNC remote control, saving and restoring window layouts, touchscreen and trackpad gestures, and accessibility (speech recognition and screen readers), but the situation is improving as distros make Wayland the default and users file more bug reports. KDE and Xfce trace origins to the late 1990s and connect back to CDE.
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