Are you an X11 fan or a Wayland fan? I’ve only been in the Linux scene for half a year, so I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other. However, from purely anecdotal evidence, I’ve noticed Wayland runs better on my PC than X11, so I’ve been pretty much purely Wayland ever since I discovered that.

I do, however, understand that people need X11 for specific reasons, and I’m definitely not the kind of person to yuck anyone’s yum. However, it seems that KDE is ready to do just that. The group has confirmed that its popular desktop environment, KDE Plasma, will eventually axe X11, albeit you shouldn’t worry too much.

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By 
Simon Batt

Nov 10, 2025

KDE Plasma 6.8 will drop X11 support, but it’s a ways off yet

As announced on the KDE blog, the group has given everyone a rough deadline as to when Plasma will stop supporting X11 apps. KDE notes that people using Plasma typically only use Wayland anyway, so for the majority of us, we won’t notice X11 fading away into the distance when the time comes. I know I definitely won’t, that’s for sure.

But what if you do rely on X11? Well, the developers have confirmed that X11 will lose support when KDE Plasma 6.8 is released. For context, we’re currently on version 6.5, so there are still a few releases left before X11 gets the boot. In fact, it seems you’ll have just over a year, at the very least:

The Plasma X11 session will be supported by KDE into early 2027.

We cannot provide a specific date, as we’re exploring the possibility of shipping some extra bug-fix releases for Plasma 6.7. The exact timing of the last one will only be known when we get closer to its actual release, which we expect will be sometime in early 2027.

If, after 6.8 releases, you really, truly need to keep X11, KDE gives you a few options. First, they point towards LTS distros like AlmaLinux 9 that will keep X11 support until 2032. Second, there’s the Xwayland compatibility layer, which KDE claims “does a great job of providing compatibility for most X11 applications.” I can’t claim to have personal experience with Xwayland, but even if it’s not the best just yet, there’s still over a year to add improvements.

Either way, it does sound like there are some solid avenues people can take if they want to continue using X11. And now that KDE has given everyone a heads-up way ahead of time, hopefully that should give people enough time to adapt.