I’ve been running SUSE/openSUSE since late 2003 (following a Linux journey that began with Slackware in 1995 and then RedHat in 1996). With openSUSE transitioning toward ALP (which I affectionately call the alien linux platform), I decided to switch my primary workstation to Kubuntu 26.04 LTS. Here are my installation impressions and a question regarding Wayland vs. X11.
Hardware:
Installation Impressions: I was previously running openSUSE Leap 15.6 on the 2TB NVMe drive. I booted the Kubuntu 26.04 installer aiming to expand my / partition (formatted as ext4). While the GUI partitioning step offered repartitioning options, the layout changes didn't take, so I opted to reuse the existing partition structure while explicitly leaving /home unformatted.
I stuck with the open-source Nouveau driver during the installation. At the very end of the installation process, the monitor showed line artifacts and began blinking during session teardown. I had to trigger a manual reboot and expected to re-do the install, but to my pleasant surprise, the base system installed successfully! My /home directory remained intact, and after booting in, I immediately installed the proprietary NVIDIA 595.84 drivers.
The Wayland / Gamma / SDDM Friction: Out of the box, Kubuntu 26.04 defaulted to Plasma 6 on Wayland. Coming from openSUSE (where I relied on nvdock), I immediately hit a wall: under Wayland, hardware color ramps and gamma adjustments inside nvidia-settings and kgamma are unavailable. At the ripe young age of 65, default display brightness without fine-grained gamma correction is a dealbreaker for my eyes.
Furthermore, logging out from the Wayland session produced a black screen with two unrendered, unreadable icon outlines (< and another symbol)—a result of KWin's logout greeter overlay failing to render cleanly over the display manager handoff.
Question for the Community: Since Kubuntu 26.04 ships Wayland-only by default on the ISO, what is the officially recommended procedure to install and switch back to a native Plasma (X11) session?
Specifically:
Thanks for any insight!
Hardware:
- Motherboard: ASUS Prime X299-A II
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
- Storage: NVMe M.2 (2TB)
- CPU / Network: Standard high-end desktop configuration
Installation Impressions: I was previously running openSUSE Leap 15.6 on the 2TB NVMe drive. I booted the Kubuntu 26.04 installer aiming to expand my / partition (formatted as ext4). While the GUI partitioning step offered repartitioning options, the layout changes didn't take, so I opted to reuse the existing partition structure while explicitly leaving /home unformatted.
I stuck with the open-source Nouveau driver during the installation. At the very end of the installation process, the monitor showed line artifacts and began blinking during session teardown. I had to trigger a manual reboot and expected to re-do the install, but to my pleasant surprise, the base system installed successfully! My /home directory remained intact, and after booting in, I immediately installed the proprietary NVIDIA 595.84 drivers.
The Wayland / Gamma / SDDM Friction: Out of the box, Kubuntu 26.04 defaulted to Plasma 6 on Wayland. Coming from openSUSE (where I relied on nvdock), I immediately hit a wall: under Wayland, hardware color ramps and gamma adjustments inside nvidia-settings and kgamma are unavailable. At the ripe young age of 65, default display brightness without fine-grained gamma correction is a dealbreaker for my eyes.
Furthermore, logging out from the Wayland session produced a black screen with two unrendered, unreadable icon outlines (< and another symbol)—a result of KWin's logout greeter overlay failing to render cleanly over the display manager handoff.
Question for the Community: Since Kubuntu 26.04 ships Wayland-only by default on the ISO, what is the officially recommended procedure to install and switch back to a native Plasma (X11) session?
Specifically:
- Which meta-packages (plasma-workspace-x11, xorg, etc.) should be pulled from the universe repositories for a clean X11 desktop?
- Is X11 still recommended for users who require hardware gamma controls (kgamma/nvidia-settings) and rock-solid session teardowns on modern NVIDIA GPUs until Wayland compositor protocols mature?
Thanks for any insight!
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