Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall sentiment on the Wayland transition

  • Many commenters report Plasma on Wayland now feels smoother, more responsive, with better frame pacing and fewer visual glitches than X11 on modern hardware.
  • Others say Wayland sessions still crash, feel laggy, or cause nausea/latency discomfort; some reverted to X11 or other DEs.
  • Several people argue the main benefit is simplifying KDE’s codebase and removing X11-era hacks; critics counter that this is being done at users’ expense.

Compatibility, regressions, and missing features

  • Common pain points:
    • Window behavior: no native support yet for restoring exact window positions, shading/rolling up, some multi-monitor placement workflows, and some “always on top” / PiP behaviors without manual rules.
    • Automation / integration: lack of global window control and input injection breaks tools such as advanced voice control (e.g., Talon), scripting, CAD pointer-warping, color pickers, and various “embed another app’s window” use cases.
    • Clipboard managers, screen sharing, and some screen-recording/streaming workflows remain brittle or compositor-specific.
    • Some hardware-specific issues: older GPUs (Pascal, old AMD), touchpads under libinput, backlight control on some laptops, and keyboard LED control.

Accessibility concerns

  • Strong concern that removing X11 before equivalent Wayland accessibility protocols are mature will lock out blind or mobility-impaired users.
  • Current Wayland accessibility support is described as partial and fragmented across compositors; X11 is still needed for some screen readers, magnifiers, and voice-driven input.
  • Some argue security-focused restrictions (no global window control, no arbitrary input) were designed without adequately planning for accessibility/automation needs.

Gaming, remote desktop, and special setups

  • Several users say games generally work fine via XWayland and point to Steam Deck and gaming distros using Wayland by default.
  • Others claim many older or niche games, multi-display simulators, and virtual pinball / multi-display rigs rely on X11-style window placement and break or require complex workarounds.
  • Remote desktop: current Wayland/KRdp flows are seen as less robust than mature X11+VNC/xrdp/Xvfb stacks, especially for headless/VM/cloud desktops.

Process, telemetry, and ecosystem fragmentation

  • Some distrust internal Wayland usage metrics and see them as biased or opaque.
  • Fragmentation across multiple Wayland compositors and many optional protocols is a recurring complaint; behavior and feature availability can differ widely.
  • A number of users expect X11 forks and X11-focused desktops (e.g., Trinity, “Xlibre”, tiling WMs) to persist for years as an escape hatch.