Appeared on the Planet KDE RSS feed today – published by the Plasma Team: <Going all-in on a Wayland future>
the future KDE Plasma 6.8 release will be Wayland-exclusive!
They’re saying that –
The Plasma X11 session will be supported by KDE into early 2027.
Given 1221507 – sddm fails to start with DisplayServer=wayland - always attempts to use tty1 this implies that SDDM will stop working.
I’m already running SDDM on Wayland in both Slowroll and Leap 16. SDDM works fine as a Wayland greeter when launched through the sddm.service…
~> systemctl status display-manager
● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-11-27 18:28:54 NZDT; 17min ago
Invocation: cea25a1e1f4f4e738cafa6c75d383da0
Docs: man:sddm(1)
man:sddm.conf(5)
Main PID: 1205 (sddm)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 4659)
CPU: 162ms
CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
└─1205 /usr/bin/sddm
FWIW, I have /etc/sddm.conf.d/10-wayland.conf with…
[General]
DisplayServer=wayland
GreeterEnvironment=QT_WAYLAND_SHELL_INTEGRATION=layer-shell
[Wayland]
CompositorCommand=kwin_wayland --drm --no-lockscreen --no-global-shortcuts --locale1
The display-manager-legacy.service is disabled…
○ display-manager-legacy.service - X Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/display-manager-legacy.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
What does that mean for Tumbleweed? Will Tumbleweed only package KDE Plasma 6.8 or will it also package an earlier X11 version?
In 2027, TW will for sure use an actual Plasma and not an ancient one.
Future arrived here a month ago. After switching to Wayland everything works fine on all hosts. Some monitors required switching from HDMI to DP to resolve problems with plasma-powerdevil.
Yes, I recall reading about that (assuming that is what you were alluding to?)…
I thought 6.8 would arrive quite a bit before 2027 - so if it were the only game in town, then the curtain will come down on X11 way before then.
Hopefully they will have addressed Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues before 6.8. Some of the issues are stalled waiting on upstream Wayland decisions, so it’s difficult to say for sure.
Also on this system:
Operating System: openSUSE Leap 16.0
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.16.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Kernel Version: 6.12.0-160000.7-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 8600G w/ Radeon 760M Graphics
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.5 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Graphics
Manufacturer: ASUS
# systemctl status display-manager-legacy.service
○ display-manager-legacy.service - X Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/display-manager-legacy.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
#
Just for fun, with a ‘/etc/sddm.conf.d/10-wayland.conf’ the same as Dean’s –
# LANG=C systemctl status display-manager.service
● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-11-27 18:21:26 CET; 6min ago
Invocation: ab462c99d39f4c3289fff1aab83f7dfb
Docs: man:sddm(1)
man:sddm.conf(5)
Main PID: 1743 (sddm)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 37252)
CPU: 67ms
CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
└─1743 /usr/bin/sddm
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm-helper[1926]: [PAM] returning.
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm[1743]: Authentication for user "xxx" successful
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm-helper[1926]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:setcred): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_setcred
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm-helper[1926]: pam_unix(sddm:session): session opened for user xxx(uid=1000) by xxx(uid=0)
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm-helper[1926]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:session): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_open_session
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm[1743]: Auth: sddm-helper exited successfully
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm[1743]: Greeter stopped. SDDM::Auth::HELPER_SUCCESS
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm-helper[1926]: Starting Wayland user session: "/usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-session" "/usr/libexec/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland"
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm[1743]: Session started true
Nov 27 18:22:02 yyy sddm-helper[1926]: Failed to write utmpx: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
#
It works!!! 
That may well have been true last year but currently with the SDDM configuration used by Dean and myself, on this system:
> who
xxx seat0 2025-11-27 18:22
xxx tty7 2025-11-27 18:22
root pts/0 2025-11-27 18:24
>
Yes, the bug still happens with display-manager-legacy.service and does not happen (at least, not so easily) with sddm.service.
Unfortunately, SDDM still ignores saved user session and launches X11 when doing autologin. One needs to explicitly set the Wayland session in SDDM configuration. Like
bor@uefi:~> cat /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf
[Autologin]
Session=plasmawayland
bor@uefi:~>
I don’t usually use Autologin, but this works for me…
~> echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
wayland
~> echo $WAYLAND_DISPLAY
wayland-0
A little bit more information about a “Wayland pure” KDE Plasma 6 session:
# ps -u sddm
PID TTY TIME CMD
#
# ps -ely | grep -E ' UID |tty|pts| 461 '
S UID PID PPID C PRI NI RSS SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD
S 0 1956 1 0 80 0 2312 790 do_sel tty4 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 1961 1 0 80 0 2260 790 do_sel tty3 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 1969 1 0 80 0 2316 790 do_sel tty2 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 2001 1 0 80 0 2392 790 do_sel tty5 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 2003 1 0 80 0 2308 790 do_sel tty6 00:00:00 agetty
S 1000 2076 2034 0 80 0 58072 46410 do_sys tty7 00:00:00 startplasma-way
S 0 6347 6326 0 80 0 15832 5063 do_wai pts/0 00:00:00 su
S 0 6389 6347 0 80 0 9244 2605 do_wai pts/0 00:00:00 bash
S 1000 6485 6464 0 80 0 9188 2594 do_wai pts/1 00:00:00 bash
S 1000 6511 6485 0 80 0 6492 2326 do_wai pts/1 00:00:00 man
S 1000 6521 6511 0 80 0 4948 1505 wait_w pts/1 00:00:00 less
S 1000 7351 7328 0 80 0 9260 2594 do_sel pts/2 00:00:00 bash
S 1000 7573 6464 0 80 0 9512 2660 do_sel pts/3 00:00:00 bash
R 0 7626 6389 0 80 0 6788 2471 - pts/0 00:00:00 ps
S 0 7627 6389 0 80 0 4412 1651 pipe_r pts/0 00:00:00 grep
#
If I’m not mistaken, there ain’t nothing more running for the user “sddm” – UID: 461 on this system.
And, there are two files in /bin/ and /usr/bin/ named “startplasma-wayland” and “startplasma-x11”.
And, the case that the SDDM Greeter / Login screen is active – no KDE Plasma 6 users are logged in:
# who
root seat0 2025-11-28 10:09
root tty4 2025-11-28 10:09
sddm seat0 2025-11-28 10:11
sddm tty1 2025-11-28 10:11
#
# ps -ely | grep -E ' UID |tty|pts| 461 '
S UID PID PPID C PRI NI RSS SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD
S 0 1961 1 0 80 0 2268 790 do_sel tty3 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 1969 1 0 80 0 2324 790 do_sel tty2 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 2001 1 0 80 0 2400 790 do_sel tty5 00:00:00 agetty
S 0 2003 1 0 80 0 2316 790 do_sel tty6 00:00:00 agetty
S 461 26786 1 0 80 0 29068 8831 do_epo ? 00:00:00 systemd
S 461 26788 26786 0 80 0 4176 5999 do_sig ? 00:00:00 (sd-pam)
S 461 26801 26786 0 80 0 4376 2209 do_epo ? 00:00:00 dbus-broker-lau
S 461 26802 26801 0 80 0 3132 1272 do_epo ? 00:00:00 dbus-broker
S 461 26833 26786 0 69 -11 13364 27162 do_epo ? 00:00:00 pipewire
S 461 26834 26786 0 69 -11 29316 141730 do_sys ? 00:00:00 wireplumber
S 0 26935 1956 0 80 0 8844 2474 do_wai tty4 00:00:00 bash
S 461 27094 27093 0 80 0 19084 14299 do_sys tty1 00:00:00 sddm-helper-sta
S 461 27095 27094 0 58 - 282660 480797 do_sys tty1 00:00:00 kwin_wayland
S 461 27100 27094 0 80 0 355864 675276 do_sys tty1 00:00:00 sddm-greeter-qt
R 0 27217 26935 99 80 0 6432 2405 - tty4 00:00:00 ps
S 0 27218 26935 0 80 0 4452 1650 pipe_r tty4 00:00:00 grep
#
In other words, the SDDM Greeter is executing with the user “sddm” – UID:461.
6700k:~ # systemd-cgls /system.slice/display-manager-legacy.service
CGroup /system.slice/display-manager-legacy.service:
├─1024 /usr/bin/sddm
└─1030 /usr/bin/Xorg.bin -nolisten tcp -background none -seat seat0 vt2 -auth /run/sddm/xauth_sTvVfl -noreset -displayfd 16
6700k:~ #
6700k:~ # systemd-cgls /user.slice/user-463.slice --full --no-pager
CGroup /user.slice/user-463.slice:
├─user@463.service …
│ ├─session.slice
│ │ └─dbus-broker.service
│ │ ├─2374 /usr/bin/dbus-broker-launch --scope user
│ │ └─2378 dbus-broker --log 11 --controller 10 --machine-id 46041d3f20844a149330bc839d687547 --max-bytes 100000000000000 --max-fds 25000000000000 --max-matches 5000000000
│ └─init.scope
│ ├─2077 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd --user
│ └─2091 (sd-pam)
└─session-1.scope
├─2014 /usr/libexec/sddm/sddm-helper --socket /tmp/sddm-auth-41a1631f-47d6-4b4a-b717-df0b40d470f2 --id 2 --start /usr/bin/sddm-greeter-qt6 --socket /tmp/sddm-:0-gMEYUK --theme /usr/share/sddm/themes/breeze-openSUSE --user sddm --greeter
└─2251 /usr/bin/sddm-greeter-qt6 --socket /tmp/sddm-:0-gMEYUK --theme /usr/share/sddm/themes/breeze-openSUSE
6700k:~ #
6700k:~ # systemd-cgls /user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-7.scope --full --no-pager
CGroup /user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-7.scope:
├─3633 /usr/libexec/sddm/sddm-helper --socket /tmp/sddm-auth-41a1631f-47d6-4b4a-b717-df0b40d470f2 --id 1 --start /usr/libexec/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland --user karl
├─3652 /usr/bin/ksecretd --pam-login 13 14
└─3653 /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland
6700k:~ #
Which is exactly what I said.
Wow, Dean, I had been procrastinating the move to sddm.service, somehow thinking it would require more than just this. And, wrong I was. Funny to immediately see that sddm is now running wayland. Thanks a lot
And as I demonstrated achieved via System Settings (rather than a manual edit of a system file).