News · October 12

KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta Released

Last week, KDE released the beta version of Plasma 6.8. This marks the start of the final testing phase for the next release of the free desktop environment. We’d like to give you a sneak peek at the new features.

Teaser at TUXEDO Computers

Read the news at TUXEDO →

Related on Linux und Ich: 30 Years of KDE: Plasma 6.8 Drops X11, Plus a Birthday Documentary · KDE: The Documentary premieres on October 14, right on time for the 30th birthday

News · October 14

Plasma 6.8 drops X11 in favor of Wayland

The latest version 6.8 of the Plasma desktop, released on October 14, brings improvements in many areas. At the same time, the removal of the X11 session marks the end of an era. We’ll explain what this means for you.

Teaser at TUXEDO Computers

Read the news at TUXEDO →

News · October 30

TUXEDO OS Open Beta Approaching the Final Stretch

In November, we’ll be entering the final stretch of the TUXEDO OS Open Beta. If you’ve found any bugs or other issues, now is the time to report them.

Teaser at TUXEDO Computers

Read the news at TUXEDO →

Related on Linux und Ich: Pulsgeber 0.5.3: Ready for TUXEDO Control Center 3.1 · Pulsgeber: TUXEDO Control Center Profiles in the GNOME Quick Settings

This Week in TUXEDO OS

KDE Apps of the Month

KDE Photos – A New Image Manager for the Plasma Desktop

If you open an image under Plasma, chances are you have been using Gwenview for many years.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #40

Full introduction in issue #40 →

Minuet – Ear Training with KDE

Recognizing intervals, picking out chords, clapping back rhythms: people who learn an instrument usually train their ear with textbooks and listening examples. Minuet from the KDE project takes over this task on your computer.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #41

Full introduction in issue #41 →

Drawy – A Canvas for Your Ideas

Some ideas are easier to draw than to put into words. Whether it is a flowchart, a quick sketch, or a branching train of thought: on a digital whiteboard, you can organize your thoughts and make connections visible.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #42

Full introduction in issue #42 →

Audex – Digitizing Audio CDs on Linux

Even in the age of streaming, many households still have numerous music CDs sitting on their shelves. Anyone looking to digitize their collection and play their music on a computer, smartphone, or other devices will find Audex a useful tool for the job.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #43

Full introduction in issue #43 →

KGeoTag – Adding Location Data to Photos After the Fact

Anyone who takes photos with a digital camera on vacation or while hiking knows the problem: weeks later, you often no longer know exactly where a picture was taken. Smartphones save the location automatically, but many digital cameras lack a GPS receiver.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #44

Full introduction in issue #44 →

This Week in TUXEDO OS

Tips of the Month

Searching and Monitoring in the Terminal with fzf and btop

If you work in the terminal often, you know the problem: the command you are looking for is somewhere in the history, the file is buried in a deeply nested folder, and the process that spins up the fan is hidden in a long list.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #41

What the tip covers:

• Installation
• fzf: Fuzzy Search Any List
• btop: A System Monitor in the Terminal
• Limitations

Read the tip in issue #41 →

Reading the APT Package History and Undoing Changes

After an update, a program no longer starts, or a package that was there yesterday is missing. At the latest, the question arises: what has actually changed on the system in the last few days?

This Week in TUXEDO OS #42

What the tip covers:

• Reading the History on TUXEDO OS
• Undoing Changes with APT 3
• Limitations

Read the tip in issue #42 →

Automatic Light and Dark Mode with Night Light

In Europe, daylight saving time ends on Sunday, October 25, and it gets dark an hour earlier in the evening. If you are still working on your notebook by then, a bright desktop can quickly feel glaring.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #43

What the tip covers:

• The Day-Night Cycle Sets the Pace
• Night Light: Warmer Colors in the Evening
• The Theme Changes with the Time of Day

Read the tip in issue #43 →

Automatically Lower the Refresh Rate on Battery

Many notebooks, gaming models in particular, come with displays running at 120, 165, or 240 Hz. Motion looks smoother, but every extra frame costs power because the GPU and the display have to work harder. At your desk with the power adapter plugged in, that does not matter, but on the go it does.

This Week in TUXEDO OS #44

What the tip covers:

• Find Suitable Modes
• Create the Script
• Add It to Power Management

Read the tip in issue #44 →

This Week in TUXEDO OS

Updates and Security

TUXEDO’s own packages and important security updates from this month’s issues, each with the latest version. In addition, there were 97 Ubuntu Security Notices (USN) that flow into TUXEDO OS.

TUXEDO · October 2026

All Issues in October 2026

• #40 from October 2: This week brought some genuinely good news from our western neighbors. Both the Netherlands and France are developing workplace environments for public authorities that combine a Linux operating system with the Plasma desktop and an office suite.
• #41 from October 9: Plasma 6.8 is about to be released: the KDE developers have brought the beta into its final phase, and the release is planned for October 14. What matters most is what is missing: for the first time, Plasma no longer ships an X11 session, and Wayland is the only option at login.
• #42 from October 16: Happy birthday, KDE! On October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich, then a student in Tübingen, announced a new project in a Usenet group: the “Kool Desktop Environment”. The cool K has long since become a trademark, and the desktop has grown into a community that maintains hundreds of programs.
• #43 from October 23: This week, a security flaw hit like a thunderclap: On Wednesday, October 21, the PHP team released emergency updates for two critical vulnerabilities in versions 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35.
• #44 from October 30: Last weekend, the moderators of r/opensource, the largest open-source community on Reddit, shut out AI-assisted projects with new rules. r/fossdroid followed shortly afterwards. The backlash is fierce: whether software is free depends on its license, not on the tool.

Quotes and teasers: TUXEDO Computers, “This Week in TUXEDO OS” and blog. The full texts are available at tuxedocomputers.com.

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The name originally stood for Kool Desktop Environment, a nod to the commercial Common Desktop Environment (CDE) on other Unix systems. Because KDE was built on Qt, whose license wasn’t really free back then, GNOME came about as the counter-project. The short version of the years that followed, according to heise (in German): the KDE e.V. association in 1997, KDE 1 in 1998, later the much-loved KDE 3, and in 2008 the rather bumpy KDE 4.

KDE 4 drove a lot of users away at the time, and some still maintain its predecessor today as the Trinity desktop. At the same time, that release brought along programs like Dolphin and Okular as well as the Plasma interface. Today the project is split into the KDE Frameworks libraries, the KDE Gear applications, and the KDE Plasma desktop. Plasma now also runs on smartphones, TVs, and the Steam Deck.

Plasma 6.8: So Long, X11

Right on time for the birthday, Plasma 6.8 is out, and this release draws a thick line: Plasma no longer starts an X11 session and runs on Wayland only. GNOME already led the way here. Older programs that still need X11 keep working through XWayland. The KDE applications themselves are supposed to keep working on X11 desktops for the time being.

Under the hood, KWin now renders through OpenGL ES only, according to 9to5Linux, with Vulkan to follow later. NVIDIA graphics get triple buffering by default, and the Plasma shell starts faster. In everyday use, Spectacle stands out: screen recordings now capture system audio and the microphone. Also new are the Kup backup tool and dwell clicking, and Steam windows finally get shadows and rounded corners.

When you get Plasma 6.8 depends, as usual, on your distribution. According to OMG! Ubuntu, rolling-release distros like Arch Linux will ship it in the next few days, while KDE neon will take a few weeks. Kubuntu 26.10 just missed the date and stays on Plasma 6.7. So there it’s a matter of waiting or hoping for a backport.

KDE: The Documentary

If you’re interested in the story behind the version numbers, set aside a good hour. The YouTube channel CultRepo made a documentary with support from KDE, which premiered at 7:30 p.m. German time (CEST). KDE: The Documentary – The Story of Free Software Underdogs runs for just over an hour.

The video is only loaded from YouTube after you click.

The documentary covers the highs and lows of three decades: the fight over the Qt license and the rivalry with GNOME, the success of KHTML, which later became WebKit and thus also Chrome, and the KDE 4 debacle. Among those interviewed are Matthias Ettrich, Lars Knoll, Aaron Seigo, Nate Graham, and – a nice touch for the GNOME camp – GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza.

Birthday Donations

Of course, free software doesn’t run without money either. That’s why KDE has launched a year-end fundraiser, with milestones at 50,000, 75,000, and 100,000 euros listed on the page. Among other things, the money is meant to go into accessible and energy-efficient software. If you want to support KDE in the long run, you can become a supporting member. Fittingly for its founding year, KDE raised that goal from 1,500 to 1,996 members.

KDE and Me

My own Linux journey started with window managers like Window Maker and Enlightenment E17. At some point, around the KDE 3.x days I’d guess, I ended up with KDE as well. A complete desktop with all the bells and whistles – for Linux, that was outstanding at the time. Until then, you usually had to piece together a panel, a file manager, and all the rest yourself.

That said, I never became a KDE devotee. Back when I was posting as “Chrissss” on ubuntuusers.de, the big German Ubuntu community, I was firmly on the GNOME side and regularly asked the KDE folks for help whenever a wiki article needed a KDE section. For an article about Bluetooth mice I did install KDE 4 once – and was surprised it didn’t even come with Bluetooth settings.

Still, KDE never quite let go of me. In 2009 I congratulated KDE on 4.3 (in German) here on the blog and wondered whether the developers might yet convince an old GNOME guy like me to switch. That didn’t quite work out. But I brought KDE Connect into GNOME via an extension (in German), and when I write Markdown on KDE, I do it with Kate (in German). If KDE, then all the way.

All in all, the Linux desktop would look very different today without KDE – and without the never-ending rivalry between the two, so would GNOME. In my opinion, the project did a lot to make Linux usable on ordinary computers in the first place. So: happy 30th birthday, KDE! How long have you been using KDE, and which version stuck with you the most?

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Since Saturday, the trailer for “KDE: The Documentary” has been up on YouTube, and it has collected a good 43,000 views in its first few days. The full film follows on October 14. It tells the story of the project, from Matthias Ettrich’s call on Usenet, through the Qt licensing dispute that split the free desktop world, to KDE 4, the release that almost tore the community apart, and the comeback afterwards.

The video is only loaded from YouTube after you click.

The cast list reads like a reunion of the free desktops: founder Matthias Ettrich, plus Martin Konold, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Eva Brucherseifer and Cornelius Schumacher from the early years. From the Trolltech and Qt side come Eirik Chambe-Eng and Lars Knoll, and the Plasma era is represented by Aaron Seigo, Sebastian Kügler, Eike Hein, Albert Astals Cid and Nate Graham. And right in the middle of it: Miguel de Icaza, who co-founded Gnome in 1997 as a response to exactly this licensing problem. The fact that he gets to speak in a KDE documentary is a small sensation in itself.

Why October 14 of All Days?

The date is no coincidence, it’s the birthday. On October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich wrote his legendary post (in German) in the newsgroup de.comp.os.linux.misc, calling on people to build a graphical interface for Unix together, meant for end users, not for admins. The name Kool Desktop Environment was a jab at CDE, which was proprietary at the time. By the way, a nice detail for us: the starting shot for probably the best-known Linux desktop was fired in a German-language newsgroup, subject line “New Project: Kool Desktop Environment. Programmers wanted!”.

So KDE turns 30 on that day, and the project is using the occasion for a fundraising campaign. The goal is 1,500 supporting members, with a stretch goal of 1,996 by the Akademy. Using the year as a target number, you have to pull that off first. According to KDE, around 70 percent of the funds come from individuals, not from corporations. If you want to chip in, you’ll find the details on the anniversary page.

CultRepo: the people behind the camera

The film was produced by CultRepo, and the name probably doesn’t ring a bell for many people. The team is behind the YouTube channel, which used to run under Honeypot (in German). Honeypot is the Berlin job portal for developers whose lavishly produced open source documentaries earned the channel its reputation as the “Netflix for developers.” Since 2025, the crew has been going its own way, funded by sponsors and direct support from viewers. It is led by Emma Tracey, and the films are made by Josiah McGarvie and Ida Bechtle.

The list of films so far is respectable: Elixir (2018), Ember.js and GraphQL (2019), Vue.js (2020), Kubernetes and Prometheus (2022), Ruby on Rails and React.js (2023), Node.js (2024), Angular, Vite and Python (2025). Most recently, C++: The Documentary with Bjarne Stroustrup came out in June 2026. So far, it has almost always been about languages and frameworks, and KDE is the first desktop on the list. And unlike a framework, this project has real drama to offer: a license war, a split, a release that drove users away in droves, and it has still made it to 30 years.

Even as a Gnome user, I’m happy every time KDE ships another update with a big pile of new features. A second big, very much alive desktop is good for the Linux world, and the fact that this project has held on for 30 years is anything but a given. A large part of the history behind it is still scattered across mailing list archives and old Planet KDE posts, and the people who were there aren’t getting any younger. On October 14, we’ll know more. And you? What did you start with back then: KDE, Gnome, or one of the old window managers?

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On GNOME, I’m very happy with Apostrophe. The app is built on the current GNOME toolkits, fits into the desktop perfectly, and is still under active development. The revised version 3.2 was released just a few weeks ago. Only on KDE was I not particularly happy with the tools on offer. On my machine, for example, Ghostwriter crashes without a word and a memory error as soon as I type a single letter. Of course, nobody stops me from using Apostrophe on KDE too, but if I’m running KDE, I want to do it properly.

Enabling the Markdown live preview in Kate

A quick search for current, modern alternatives to Ghostwriter turned up nothing. But why search for long when KDE already ships with Kate, a very capable editor? In a default installation, Kate doesn’t offer the feature I wanted, but you can add it afterwards. As is unfortunately common with KDE, you don’t stumble across it by accident. The first thing you need is markdownpart, aka the Markdown Viewer KPart, which is the matching module for KParts, the component framework behind KDE’s editor. You can install it from the package manager on all the common Linux distributions.

### Arch Linux oder Manjaro:
$ sudo pacman -S markdownpart
### Debian, Ubuntu und Co.:
$ sudo apt install markdownpart

Then start Kate and enable Document Preview under Settings | Configure Kate | Plugins [CHECK: German UI says “Module”]. After that, open System Settings for the whole desktop from the application menu. Now you have to fight your way through the configuration jungle: Default Applications | File Associations | Known Types: text/markdown | Embedding. Click Add there and choose Markdown Part (markdownpart) [CHECK]. A click on OK activates the module. Finally, move it all the way to the top of the list.

That’s the configuration done. Restart Kate once and create a Markdown text, or simply open a Markdown file. On the right edge of Kate you’ll now find an additional icon bar with a document and magnifying glass symbol. Click it to enable the preview. For Kate to update the preview automatically while you type, there’s one really, truly, absolutely final step: tap the play button.

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