KDE Turns 30 With Plasma 6.8 and a Goodbye to X11

KDE, the free software community behind the Plasma desktop and a large family of applications, is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The project traces its start to October 1996, when developer Matthias Ettrich proposed building a modern, user-friendly desktop environment for Unix-like systems. Three decades on, the milestone is being marked with a new Plasma release rather than a simple retrospective.

That release is Plasma 6.8. Its headline features include remote upgrade support, and it also marks a clear break with the past: the project is saying goodbye to X11, the display server that powered Linux desktops for decades. Development effort across the desktop has been shifting toward Wayland for years, and this release makes that direction official in a visible way for users.

KDE is also celebrating with a movie made for the occasion. The summary available for this story does not describe its contents, so details will have to come from the project itself.

For users, the practical takeaway is simple. If you run Plasma on X11 today, now is the time to check your session setup and plan a move to Wayland before the older display stack is no longer an option.