The oldest of the open source Linux desktops is planning its final steps away from X11, while an even older Unix desktop is getting freshened up.
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.
So what exactly is wrong with X11? I find X to be absolutely great, and it is great for me to use POSIX apps across multiple architectures and systems.
Like what is it about Wayland that absolutely shits on X11 and makes people want to ditch X?
X11 doesn’t support a number of modern features well (e.g. fractional scaling) and has a fundamentally insecure operational model that makes it hard to prevent keylogging/screengrabbing, and the developers found it so hard to evolve & work with over time that they decided to start over with a more modular and conservative approach.
While it was a painful transition, I believe it’s worth it. But I don’t think that the accessibility story has developed enough to make the deprecation of X11 a good idea…