Developers of the Fedora distribution are planning to switch to using the KDE Plasma 6 user environment in the upcoming spring release, Fedora 40. This transition will involve discontinuing support for sessions based on the X11 protocol, and only allowing the use of Wayland. To support running X11 applications in the Wayland session, the XWALAND DDX server will be utilized. However, it is important to note that this proposal has not yet been reviewed by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCO), which is responsible for the technical aspects of Fedora’s development.
There are several reasons leading to the decision of ceasing support for X11 sessions. Firstly, the X.org server has been categorized as obsolete in RHEL 9, with plans to completely remove it in a future release, RHEL 10. Additionally, the transition to solely supporting Wayland is influenced by the switch from FBDEV drivers to Simpledrm drivers, which work well with Wayland, as well as the availability of Wayland support in NVIDIA priority drivers. By discontinuing support for X11, it is expected that resources can be allocated to improving the quality of the KDE stack while reducing labor costs.
It has been deemed inappropriate to continue delivering the KDE Plasma 5 environment with an X11 session in Fedora 40. This decision is based on the lack of resources available to independently support an outdated branch, especially considering the main KDE project’s focus on developing Plasma 6 and designating KDE 5 as outdated.
The release of KDE 6 is scheduled for February 2024. The new version will transition to the QT 6 library, include changes to basic settings, remove outdated features, and update the KDE Frameworks 6, which form the foundation of KDE software. By default, KDE Plasma 6 will offer a Wayland session, a new task-switching interface, and a floating panel display mode. KDE Frameworks 6 will undergo significant API changes.