We are currently heavily testing Plasma 6.1 series on our upcoming consumer product the Neo Gaming Handheld. When the first version of 6.1 hit that device I had a hard time regarding X11 issues, which were still existing in 6.0 series we had before. There is a good reason why Valve still uses Plasma 5.27 series and didn’t had updated on their platform yet.
So we knew that Wayland is the way to go. Also the gamemode session is running Wayland already. However the steam client on the desktop side is still bound to X11. So on the Steamdeck you are stuck to X11 for that reason. We found a way to switch to wayland after all. There are still some issues with games on Steam, but they are similar when running them on X11 with the Steam client.
On Nvidia side of things the current proprietary drivers have a hard time with explicit sync. Multiple libraries and parts need to match. The 550 driver series is kinda ok, as that series doesn’t ship that feature yet. Which means you won’t have those issues to begin with.
Then there are some issues and regressions which now got introduced by 6.1 series of Plasma also to the Wayland section. I had to rewrite the way I switch between desktop mode to game mode on the handheld to make that work, after we switched to wayland.
Since we use Manjaro immutable on the device I’m not bound to our update branch channels at all, as we follow a snapshot distribution and can jump between branches as we want to.
Also the current release of Manjaro is based on Plasma 6.0 series. So it depends if we want to send another update to those install medias and to the stable branch.
Then there is the question what is with testing branch? Well, testing branch acts as a staging area for now, since we have several packages blacklisted from unstable branch:
- plymouth 24+
- Nvidia 555+
- Plasma Workspace 6.1+
Which means that I have to sync from Arch repos also on testing branch. Then have to move over our overlay packages manually to the testing branch and build additional drivers like Nvidia 550 series for all kernel series, if there where updates to those. That process will create a partly broken testing branch, hence the TBD update announcements, which simply mean: DON’T UPDATE or ELSE 
At some point we might declare Plasma 6.1 as stable enough. 6.1.4 is a good candidate. For 6.0 series it was 6.0.5 and people blamed us for it as that was still buggy at some edges. Personally I’m not sure. 6.1.4 is out now on unstable and 6.1.5 is scheduled for Tue 2024-09-10.
Gnome 47.0 is scheduled for 2024-09-14 and 47.1 for 2024-10-12.
So lets see when the stars align: Either Mid-August or Mid-September …
If you want to have it right now you can always test the Immutable version of Manjaro: Manjaro Immutable Out Now for Community Testing | Manjaro News