KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, remote upgrades, and an X11 farewell

KDE has celebrated its 30th anniversary with the release of Plasma 6.8, a milestone update that signals a major shift in the desktop environment's architecture. The most significant change is the official retirement of native X11 session support, as the project fully transitions to the Wayland display protocol. While legacy X11 applications will remain functional through the XWayland compatibility layer, the move marks the end of an era for the 42-year-old protocol within Plasma. Plasma 6.8 also introduces several user-facing enhancements, including improved window decoration support for third-party applications, a streamlined Union theming system, and default Nvidia triple buffering. Additionally, the update integrates the Kup backup utility directly into the desktop environment and introduces kscreenctl, a new command-line tool for advanced display configuration management. This release positions KDE for a modern, Wayland-centric future while maintaining support for existing users.