KDE, the community behind the Plasma desktop, turned 30 this week. To mark the occasion it shipped Plasma 6.8, a release that adds remote upgrades for managed fleets and finally drops the X11 session that has shipped alongside Wayland for several years.
The remote upgrade feature is aimed at schools and companies that run KDE on many machines. Administrators can now stage an upgrade, test it on a handful of desktops and then roll it out to the rest without touching each computer.
Goodbye, X11
The bigger change for most people is the end of the X11 session. KDE says Wayland now covers the remaining gaps, from screen sharing to colour management, and that keeping both sessions working was slowing everything else down.
Distributions that still need X11 can keep shipping older Plasma releases, but KDE will not backport new features to them. The project expects most users to notice nothing at all beyond a faster, smoother desktop.