Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

Shino · 2025-09-28 12:11:50

Hello all,

today it happened. I updated my arch installation and realized, that the "Gnome on Xorg" feature is gone. Gnome only supports wayland.
How do you guys handle that? Wayland doesn't work for me. I always run into ugly bugs. I realized instantly that something was wrong, because CTRL+C doesn't work anymore in kgx (the key code is just not processed by the terminal anymore) etc.

My biggest pain point is KiCAD (https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/kicad/). KiCAD does not work under wayland. I have several issues with it and KiCAD blames the distro / wayland and is apparently unable to fix the issues in KiCAD. E.g: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/21089

Kicad official statement on the website: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCa … d-Support/

How can I get my system working again without manually recompiling gnome every other day?
I don't want to switch desktop environments. I'm afraid I have to change the Linux distro after 10+ years of using arch

Any other KiCAD users here?

SRG · 2025-09-28 13:39:22

I have many applications that are frozen on my side (OpenSCAD, Bambu Studio, Sublime Text, ...) since last update.
Also no solutions.
And no answers / extra posts in this topic, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=308515 , which seem to indicate that this is not a "general problem" encountered by everyone (but only by a subset of users, i would say).

LuxFerre · 2025-09-28 13:46:42

Any fix to get gnome back on X will be temporary at best, on arch or elsewhere. Maybe try one of the many X window managers?

Scimmia · 2025-09-28 14:04:48

Shino wrote:

I'm afraid I have to change the Linux distro after 10+ years of using arch

What would that get you? GNOME is dropping X11 completely, regardless of distro.

SRG · 2025-09-28 14:49:44

Scimmia wrote:

Shino wrote:
I'm afraid I have to change the Linux distro after 10+ years of using arch
What would that get you? GNOME is dropping X11 completely, regardless of distro.

He was probably willing to say "i'm afraid i have to change the Window Management environment after 10+ years of using arch+gnome". I'm also wondering the same (for now i have to dualboot to windows to be able to use OpenSCAD or Bambu Studio ! - i'm now sure i'll be willing to do that for a long time...)

LuxFerre · 2025-09-28 15:09:01

SRG wrote:

Scimmia wrote:
Shino wrote:
I'm afraid I have to change the Linux distro after 10+ years of using arch
What would that get you? GNOME is dropping X11 completely, regardless of distro.
He was probably willing to say "i'm afraid i have to change the Window Management environment after 10+ years of using arch+gnome". I'm also wondering the same (for now i have to dualboot to windows to be able to use OpenSCAD or Bambu Studio ! - i'm now sure i'll be willing to do that for a long time...)

You'd rather use windows than linux with another WM?

SRG · 2025-09-28 15:32:17

No, i'd rather (at some point) get bored of dual-booting windows, and i'll remove "Gnome 49+Wayland" to put something else in place, if these bugs are still happening in a few weeks. But i don't know what yet, and it's time consuming (new things to learn regarding configuration of that "something else", some other new problems to solve probably, etc.).

LuxFerre · 2025-09-28 15:43:56

SRG wrote:

No, i'd rather (at some point) get bored of dual-booting windows, and i'll remove "Gnome 49+Wayland" to put something else in place, if these bugs are still happening in a few weeks. But i don't know what yet, and it's time consuming (new things to learn regarding configuration of that "something else", some other new problems to solve probably, etc.).

Yea that I understand, but it's probably worth the time investment in learning/configuring something new because it looks like Gnome will simply not work anymore if you don't want wayland.
You can install several window managers at the same machine and try them one by one with a display manager such as Ly, it's easier than dual booting.

Shino · 2025-09-28 15:54:16

SRG wrote:

No, i'd rather (at some point) get bored of dual-booting windows, and i'll remove "Gnome 49+Wayland" to put something else in place, if these bugs are still happening in a few weeks. But i don't know what yet, and it's time consuming (new things to learn regarding configuration of that "something else", some other new problems to solve probably, etc.).

I always had the problem that system upgrades switched my default selection of the WM from "Gnome on Xorg" to "Gnome" for the last 6ish years. I always felt the impact almost immediately because something is not working. From breaking things like the "right mouse button" not working or some menu in some application simply being empty.
The only workaround for me is probably to go back to a distro with older packages and hope that I get another year or two. I don't want to keep rebuilding and patching my whole system and building a bodge-fixed chimera of hundreds of patched and self compiled packages for the next years. I could use Windows, if I wanted something like that. Once the Wayland issue hits users of Ubuntu or whatever people use, I hope that the incompatibilities get fixed or at least looked at. Kicad (and I understand that) simply closes all issues related to Wayland but I need that tool to be usable.

I tried several other WMs over the last years but have to confess that I like Gnome the best and don't want to work with anything else although Gnome made huge steps back in usability for me over the last releases since Gnome 40.

weaseal · 2025-09-28 17:35:33

You can restore X11 using my write up: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/s/iXa1iScxvL

SRG · 2025-09-28 19:09:49

But it's only a temporary solution - GNOME 50 will (as far as i know, now) not work anymore with X11 (= wayland will be mandatory at that time).

Shino · 2025-09-28 19:32:06

SRG wrote:

But it's only a temporary solution - GNOME 50 will (as far as i know, now) not work anymore with X11 (= wayland will be mandatory at that time).

At least for me that will be the biggest disaster that can happen. Linux has been working well for me for almost the last two decades. But if they deactivate X11 without a working alternative I can't work with it anymore.
Just realized that screen shares in the browser are not possible for me anymore. chromium and Firefox are both not able to grab the screen. Just a black window. I will compile gnome with X11 for the time and once that's no longer possible I think I have to switch back to Windows.

Most of the bugs I experience have been there for years and I honestly don't even know how to report them because I cannot pinpoint the component that's causing the problem...

SRG · 2025-09-28 19:38:23

I'm also very disappointed by :
- how unstable GNOME49 is also for me (i have many bugs here and there and several unusable applications)
- how difficult it is to find help (for the reasons you are pointing : quite often, there is even no errors and no idea where the problem could be (wayland ? gnome ? mutter ? the app itself ?)

Overall, i really find that linux is less and less stable these years (since ... COVID ? or new generations having taken over with less care ? or "previous generations" not having been replaced, so less people working on the bugs and apps ? i don't know, but for decades i had 0 issues with linux, since a few years, i spent an insane amount of time with bugs everywhere (even with my shiny expensive asus router).

LuxFerre · 2025-09-28 22:38:32

I've used gnome for quite some time, and kde, and enlightenment, and i3, and sway, and hyprland, and xfce, and... And I just can't see what's so incredibly special about gnome that people will abandon linux if they can't use it. There's at least a handful of very competent alternatives, I really don't see why spend so much time trying to avoid the inevitable here...

Maybe y'all should just organize a fork then?

Last edited by LuxFerre (2025-09-28 22:39:04)

Shino · 2025-09-28 23:24:47

LuxFerre wrote:

I've used gnome for quite some time, and kde, and enlightenment, and i3, and sway, and hyprland, and xfce, and... And I just can't see what's so incredibly special about gnome that people will abandon linux if they can't use it. There's at least a handful of very competent alternatives, I really don't see why spend so much time trying to avoid the inevitable here...
Maybe y'all should just organize a fork then?

To me, Gnome is the only Desktop System that actually managed to show a fully unified and integrated experience. All setting etc. are accessible in the UI. No weird 3rd party tools. On arch I simply install the gnome meta package and everything works. It integrates with NetworkManager etc without manually gluing everything together. The workspaces and the whole look and feel around them fit my workflow with the hot corner in the top left etc... (although the former vertically stacked workspaces were much better IMHO. I would kill to get them back.). Besides all that I like how gnome looks and how the animations feel. It's actually pretty nice .

I also used most things in your list. I use a redhat machine at work with XFCE and I'm so much slower... Especially since I have a huge amount of open windows at work (> 100. I work in the semiconductor industry and most of the stuff I deal with takes a ton of time to open or requires special shell environments with certain versions of tools requiring 30 to 40 terminal windows alone. I struggle to manage that amount with any other desktop environment. The multiple workspace feature of almost any other environment feel completely unusable to me.

In the end I can adapt to something different. But one thing I always liked with Linux is that it is a system FOR me and not some stuff that actively works against me like Windows. And as long as Gnome exists as a option I would prefer that.

seth · 2025-09-29 08:21:42

So the glory of gnome is that it's better at handling 5 windows on your home system than some other WM is at handling 100 windows on your office system? Is at least the HW somewhat comparable?
Either way, if you want to handle 100+ windows (on one workspace???) and have enough resources (I'd probably disable the compositor) you might want to use stuff like rofi (built-in feature) or dmenu for that.

The hot corner is just exposé?
KDE at least used to have that and there's https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/skippy-xd-git

certain versions of tools requiring 30 to 40 terminal windows alone

Use a TE w/ internal tab support? Or - much better: tmux?

LuxFerre · 2025-09-29 09:24:43

KDE has a "fully unified and integrated experience" with "all settings accessible in the UI", "no weird 3rd party options" etc. It also has hot corners and virtual desktops and integration with NM. You can potentially make it look like gnome too.
I can't even imagine what managing 100 open windows looks like, but I'd probably use sway/i3 with lots of keyboard shortcuts if I had to try... What I can imagine is that windows is very unlikely to do a better job at that than basically any linux wm, unless having zero privacy is also a requirement

P.S. I think KDE is dropping xorg too. It still works though. I think at some point someone is going to make a stand and commit to maintain xorg support, but it won't be KDE or Gnome.

Last edited by LuxFerre (2025-09-29 09:26:57)

Lone_Wolf · 2025-09-29 10:49:44

KDE has put X support in maintenance mode which means it won't get new features anymore but won't be dropped until plasma 7 .
There are also some indications that bugs about changes that work in wayland but cause issues on X may be ignored, but as far as I know that's not official policy.

Shino · 2025-09-30 06:10:44

seth wrote:

So the glory of gnome is that it's better at handling 5 windows on your home system than some other WM is at handling 100 windows on your office system? Is at least the HW somewhat comparable?

That's not the issue. I'm just trying to day, that I have a very adapted workflow to gnome and that I'd much rather change distros to get a working gnome back because that has less impact on me than changing the UI. It's a personal preference. Nothing technical. So it does not make sense to try to discuss that.

The fact alone, that half of the windows have working window decorations / titlebars, which means for me, that the X is on the left side of the window and the other half doesn't (window controls on the right or some other stuff happening) drives me crazy.

Nevertheless, I tried out KDE for two days... Plasma in wayland has the same issues as my gnome. At least I now know, that Mutter shouldn't be the culprit.
I spent 5 hours debugging kicad and came to the conclusion that the opengl context is redrawn as it should but not displayed. The only thing that triggers it to become visible is either a size change, or a GUI element in the same window that psrtially covers the GL area like the dropdown of a menu etc... The normal redraw events show no effect.
It weird because that code is the same that also draws the schematic viewer etc. which works.

I spent 3 months on that issue but have no way to report it anywhere. Any suggestions where to report that stuff to?

Last edited by Shino (2025-09-30 06:32:23)

skunktrader · 2025-09-30 06:29:45

Shino wrote:

I spent 5 hours debugging kicad and came to the conclusion that the opengl context is redrawn as it should but not displayed. The only thing that triggers it to become visible is either a size change, or a GUI element in the same window that psrtially covers the GL area like the dropdown of a menu etc... The normal redraw events show no effect.
It weird because that code is the same that also draws the schematic viewer etc. which works.
I spent 3 months on that issue but have no way to report it anywhere. Any suggestions where to report that stuff to?

Have you tried here https://forum.kicad.info ? Or Help -> Report Bug in KiCad?

skunktrader · 2025-09-30 06:32:33

Have you tried starting KiCad with the following command line:

GDK_BACKEND=x11 kicad

Shino · 2025-09-30 06:39:43

skunktrader wrote:

Have you tried here https://forum.kicad.info ? Or Help -> Report Bug in KiCad?

Yes. Of course. 3 months ago: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/21089
They closed it as wayland is not supported and said I should report it to gnome.

X11 works for kicad.

Any ideas how to get the window decorations roughly aligned, so that not every window has its own style? GTK3 has no darktheme on Wayland, most GTK applications have the window controls on the left, as I want it but the other half of applications have their window controls somewhere. I guess it's due to the fact the server side decorations are not a thing anymore on wayland.

Shino · 2025-09-30 06:41:14

skunktrader wrote:

Have you tried starting KiCad with the following command line:
GDK_BACKEND=x11 kicad

You are the best! That works!

Shino · 2025-10-03 19:06:02

Shino wrote:

skunktrader wrote:
Have you tried starting KiCad with the following command line:
GDK_BACKEND=x11 kicad
You are the best! That works!

Okay. Now that I tried to use kicad, I see that it actually works even less than with native wayland. A lot of graphic glitches and windows that are half empty when moved. Even ones without custom OpenGL.

I spent around 20 hours debugging kicad and wxwidgets but couldn't find anything that goes wrong. Bug reports at KiCAD, wxwidgets, GNOME aren't helping. Kicad ignores the issue and the other projects can't reproduce that.

seth · 2025-10-03 19:16:23

Please post your Xorg log, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#General and the output of "glxinfo -B"
Does

GSK_RENDERER=cairo GDK_BACKEND=x11 kicad

help?
(The next part would be LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 but that only does something if you're not using nvidia)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-09-28 12:11:50

Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#2 2025-09-28 13:39:22

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#3 2025-09-28 13:46:42

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#4 2025-09-28 14:04:48

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#5 2025-09-28 14:49:44

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#6 2025-09-28 15:09:01

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#7 2025-09-28 15:32:17

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#8 2025-09-28 15:43:56

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#9 2025-09-28 15:54:16

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#10 2025-09-28 17:35:33

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#11 2025-09-28 19:09:49

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#12 2025-09-28 19:32:06

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#13 2025-09-28 19:38:23

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#14 2025-09-28 22:38:32

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#15 2025-09-28 23:24:47

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#16 2025-09-29 08:21:42

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#17 2025-09-29 09:24:43

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#18 2025-09-29 10:49:44

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#19 2025-09-30 06:10:44

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#20 2025-09-30 06:29:45

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#21 2025-09-30 06:32:33

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#22 2025-09-30 06:39:43

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#23 2025-09-30 06:41:14

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#24 2025-10-03 19:06:02

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

#25 2025-10-03 19:16:23

Re: Gnome Update: No Xorg anymore.Kicad and other applications unusable.

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