\u201cThe Plasma team isn\u2019t emotional about display servers.\u201d<\/em> It\u2019s simply a matter of practicality. Maintaining two different backends is a drain on resources, and focusing solely on Wayland will speed up progress across the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor now, the Plasma X11 session remains in maintenance mode. That means critical issues\u2014like login failures or major regressions\u2014will still be addressed. However, minor bugs are unlikely to get fixes unless funded, and new X11-specific features are off the table entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interestingly, X11-related bugs make up less than 1% of all open issues in KDE\u2019s bug tracker, suggesting that most problems (and improvements) these days are platform-agnostic. So, while X11 isn\u2019t getting new love, users still benefit from general Plasma development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When will X11 support actually end? Well, there\u2019s no hard deadline yet. The team estimates that X11 won\u2019t be dropped within the next two years, but the real deciding factor will be when major distributions fully transition to Wayland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Currently, 73% of Plasma 6 users (with telemetry enabled) are on Wayland<\/strong>, up from 60% across all Plasma versions. Even SteamOS, which recently shipped Plasma 6 with X11 as default, hasn\u2019t stopped the upward trend\u2014Wayland adoption continues to climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDistros like Fedora, Arch, and KDE Neon have already switched, and upcoming Debian and Kubuntu LTS releases are expected to follow suit. Once the holdouts move, X11\u2019s days in Plasma will be numbered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the team acknowledges that not everyone is ready to jump ship. Some users rely on niche tools like AutoKey or specialized input devices that still work better on X11. That\u2019s why the session isn\u2019t going away just yet\u2014KDE wants to ensure that even the most dedicated X11 users won\u2019t feel left behind when the transition finally happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, the data speaks for itself: most users are already on Wayland, and the gaps are shrinking. As Nate notes, \u201cLong transitions like this are tough, but ultimately worth it so that we all get something better in the end.\u201d<\/em> To summarize, X11 remains an option for now, but its sunset is clearly on the horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You have a couple years left at least. If the church isn’t extracted by then, will I end up on a niche desktop that supports XLibre saying goodbye to KDE, my favorite desktop environment? Or will some developers take over the project? XFCE is a close second. Consequently, XFCE is just getting started with Wayland, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12498,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12435\/revisions\/12498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"KDE](\"https:\/\/cdn.shortpixel.ai\/spai\/q_lossy+ret_img+to_auto\/linuxiac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/kde-x11-wayland-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n