KDE Plasma 6.8 Released to Celebrate 30 Years of the Project

KDE Plasma 6.8 has arrived on the 30th anniversary of the open-source desktop project, bringing a range of new features and improvements.

The release adds Kup, a backup tool designed to make automated backups to external storage easier. The Spectacle screenshot utility can now record system audio and microphone input alongside screen activity.

Other desktop changes include rounded corners and shadows for the Steam client, plus a new accessibility option that triggers a click after the pointer rests over an interface element. The Digital Clock widget now supports the Hindu Bikram Sambat calendar, and the on-screen keyboard adds Amharic.

Under the hood, NVIDIA graphics use triple buffering by default, HDR works with ICC colour profiles, and Plasma Shell starts faster and uses less memory when many widgets are running. The updated System Monitor also lets users set CPU affinity for individual processes: right-click a process and choose Select Affinity to choose which cores it can use.

X11 sessions no longer supported

Plasma 6.8 drops support for running a full desktop session on X11. Legacy applications can still run through XWayland, and newer KDE apps will continue to work on X11 desktops.

The KDE wiki has further details about the release.

Plasma 6.8 is expected to reach rolling-release distributions in the coming days, with KDE neon users receiving it in a software update over the coming weeks. Kubuntu 26.10 was released too early to include it and instead ships with the Plasma 6.7 series.