Fedora 40 + KDE 6 (Wayland): Quick Reality Check
Things I Tested (and What Actually Happened)
A few days ago, I was genuinely worried about this release. KDE 6 on Wayland is known for breaking quite a few workflows, so I prepared a checklist in advance of things I absolutely needed to test in Fedora 40 KDE (no X11 by default). You can find that checklist here: https://www.unmanarc.com/en/2024/02/things-to-test-in-fedora-40-kde-no-x11/. Let’s see how things actually turned out.
KeePassXC Auto-Type… [FAIL]
Fedora 40 ships with KeePassXC 2.7.7 (Fedora 39 had 2.7.6), but unfortunately Auto-Type does not work as expected under KDE 6 / Wayland. This is a serious regression for my daily workflow.
X11 Forwarding via SSH (ssh -X)… [PASS]
I tested classic X11 forwarding in both directions:
- From an X11 host to Fedora 40 (Wayland): Working!
- From Fedora 40 (Wayland) to an X11 host: Working!
Perfect. X11 compatibility is still present where it really matters.
Fedora 40 as a QEMU/KVM Guest (GUI Performance)… [PASS 1/2]
Overall GUI responsiveness and performance are surprisingly good and smooth.
- Using QXL: Buggy. It works, but crashes when resizing the window… 😞
- Using Virtio: Working and smooth! Firefox can play 4K YouTube videos with around 150–300% CPU usage on an Intel GPU. That’s quite impressive. The only issue is mouse speed mismatch between host and guest (this does not happen with QXL).
KRFB (VNC Server)… [FAIL]
There is a Wayland implementation, and it looks like active development is happening, but in practice it crashes with a segmentation fault. For now: completely unusable.
XRDP Server… [FAIL]
Does not work out of the box. At least with KDE 6, XRDP is simply broken.
Full Screen Sharing… [PASS]
I tested full screen sharing using Google Meet with both major browsers.
- Google Chrome: Everything works. The new window selection dialog with thumbnails is a nice improvement.
- Firefox: Not tested yet.
HiDPI / 4K Scaling… [PASS]
Works well. Scaling at 200% does not introduce noticeable lag or stuttering. Overall experience is solid.
NVIDIA… [???]
Not tested yet.
My Conclusion
This was a very quick, first-pass review based on a checklist I prepared a couple of months ago, focused specifically on what could go wrong with Fedora 40 + KDE 6 out of the box. I did not attempt to install X11 from external repositories, nor did I try to patch or workaround any of the crashes.
Given these results, I have to say that Fedora 40 KDE is still highly unstable for my specific use cases. If this many core tools are broken for me, I can only imagine how many other workflows are affected. It might be acceptable for very light usage (browsing, basic tasks), but that’s about it.
In the end, what really frustrates me is the constant deprecation of mature, working software, only to replace it with alternatives that simply do not offer the same level of functionality yet.