KDE Plasma’s Wayland Transition to Finish by 2025
▼ Summary
– Michael Larabel is the founder and principal author of Phoronix.com, a site launched in 2004 focused on the Linux hardware experience.
– He has authored over 20,000 articles on topics including Linux hardware support, performance, and graphics drivers.
– Larabel is the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software.
– His professional profiles and contact information are available on Twitter, LinkedIn, and his personal website, MichaelLarabel.com.
– The article serves as a professional biography outlining his role, contributions, and public contact channels.
The KDE development team has set a definitive timeline for completing its transition to the Wayland display protocol, with the goal of finalizing the move by the year 2025. This marks a significant step forward for the popular desktop environment, signaling a concerted effort to move beyond the aging X11 system that has served Linux for decades. The shift promises to deliver a more modern, secure, and performant graphical foundation for users, addressing long-standing architectural limitations.
The transition is not about a sudden, forced switch but a measured process of achieving feature parity and stability. Developers are focusing on ensuring that the Plasma desktop experience on Wayland matches, and eventually surpasses, what users currently enjoy on X11. Key areas of work include refining input handling for various devices, perfecting multi-monitor support, and ensuring flawless compatibility with a vast ecosystem of applications. The 2025 target represents a commitment to resolving these final hurdles, giving the community a clear expectation for when a fully mature Wayland session will be ready for widespread adoption.
This planned completion date follows years of incremental progress. KDE Plasma’s Wayland session has been available as an experimental option for several release cycles, allowing early adopters and testers to provide crucial feedback. Each quarterly update has brought noticeable improvements in reliability and capability, gradually building confidence in the new platform. The decision to set a firm deadline underscores the project’s maturity and the developers’ confidence in closing the remaining gaps. It also provides a clear signal to distributions, third-party application developers, and hardware vendors to prioritize Wayland support in their own planning.
For everyday users, the practical impact will be a smoother, more integrated desktop experience. Wayland’s architecture offers inherent advantages, such as improved security through client isolation and better handling of modern graphics technologies like variable refresh rates (VRR/FreeSync) and high-dynamic-range (HDR) displays. The move away from X11 is expected to reduce graphical glitches, screen tearing, and input lag, particularly in mixed-DPI multi-monitor setups that have traditionally been problematic. While some niche applications and advanced use-cases may require continued X11 support via compatibility layers like XWayland, the core desktop interaction is poised for a substantial upgrade.
The 2025 timeline aligns with broader industry trends, as other major desktop environments like GNOME have also made significant strides with Wayland. This collective movement helps consolidate developer effort and encourages the creation of standardized protocols for critical desktop functions. As the finish line comes into view, the KDE community’s work will be pivotal in delivering a polished, next-generation desktop that leverages the full potential of modern Linux graphics stacks.
(Source: Phoronix)
