Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release

Post by httpsterio » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #79

bityard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I upgraded from Debian 12 to 13 on my personal laptop running KDE, I knew that the switch from X11 to Wayland would happen and was braced for all kinds of issues, like every other time I tried to switch to Wayland in previous years. Instead, I could tell literally no difference. Multiple desktops works fine, scaling works fine, screen capture works fine, old apps work fine, literally everything works just fine.…

I think I noticed lower latency, more consistent frame pacing (recent-ish improvement in KWin) and a more "solid" feel because everything in a frame is synchronized. On X11, you can have things like border and contents of a window not matching exactly while resizing. An early principle of Wayland was "Every frame is perfect", which is clearly reflected in how e.g. window resizing works.

Post by bsammon » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #26

alyandon wrote: post #12

I empathize but every time I try a Wayland based desktop I always end up encountering weird bugs and corner cases with basic usability that drive me back to X11. I'll be sad if that is still the case when 6.8 rolls around as then I'll be hunting for another DE.

Well, there's SonicDE, but like many such projects it's probably maintained by reactionaries which introduces its own suite of issues around security, code quality, and "will this be maintained in a year, 5 years?"

Post by c-hendricks » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

httpsterio wrote: post #111

ahartmetz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I noticed lower latency, more consistent frame pacing (recent-ish improvement in KWin) and a more "solid" feel because everything in a frame is synchronized. On X11, you can have things like border and contents of a window not matching exactly while resizing. An early principle of Wayland was "Every frame is perfect", which is clearly reflected in how e.g. window resizing works.

my experience us sadly the opposite. when I'm recording gameplay with OBS with x11 and xfce I have roughly a 7-9ms frame render time and with Wayland and any desktop env it creeps up above 16ms, which means I can't get a solid 60fps. in all other cases other than gaming and recording, Wayland has been a delight.

Post by c-hendricks » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

thesuitonym wrote: post #107

senfiaj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Chrome's PIP is a stupid workaround for Windows and Mac because they do not have robust window management. What are you talking about? It's very convenient when I watch video while I do some work or entertaining thing on other web page or app. It's fine if you don't want to use it but many people do.

Yes, it's fine, but it shouldn't be necessary. If Windows and Mac OS just had native support for always-on-top windows, you wouldn't need it.

Post by krieger_857 » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #40

skeledrew wrote: post #13

I've been using Kubuntu for the past 12 years without any X-related issue, and have and am actively working on stuff that requires it. I guess it's time to switch to another DE.

Most people are not you. A small minority do things that really need X. However there is good reason to say that the things that really need X are things you shouldn't do anyway. Meanwhile there is a slightly larger minority that need things that cannot be done in X. For the vast majority of people they cannot tell the difference, either works just fine. If there are issues they are tiny things they don't notice unti…