Arch Linux

foobat

Member

Registered: 2021-02-13

Posts: 28

How to force an application to run under XWayland in a Wayland session

I am using plasma Wayland sessions daily. However, some of the apps I'm using, especially eclipse based IDEs, have poor native wayland support. Problems include wrong text and icon sizes, etc . So I want them to run under xwayland.

I tried export GDK_BACKEND=X11. However, this causes the applications to panic that cannot open display.

I also tried unset WAYLAND_DISPLAY, to make the apps ignore the wayland server and fall back to X11. However, even the environment variable WAYLAND_DISPLAY is unset, the applications still uses native wayland instead of xwayland.

Is there any methods independent of DEs, WMs and GUI toolkits that can force a GUI app to run under xwayland? For example, by making the wayland server undetectable for that app, and making the xwayland xserver detectable.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,840

Re: How to force an application to run under XWayland in a Wayland session

I tried export GDK_BACKEND=X11. However, this causes the applications to panic that cannot open display.

printenv

Can you run "xterm" on the wayland desktop (which will run on X11 no matter what

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

foobat

Member

Registered: 2021-02-13

Posts: 28

Re: How to force an application to run under XWayland in a Wayland session

I tried export GDK_BACKEND=X11. However, this causes the applications to panic that cannot open display.

printenv

Can you run "xterm" on the wayland desktop (which will run on X11 no matter what

Yes. X11 apps like xterm and electron apps works normally. However, if export GDK_BACKEND=X11, then GTK based apps panic that cannot open display, even if $DISPLAY is correctly set.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,840

Re: How to force an application to run under XWayland in a Wayland session

GTK based apps panic that cannot open display

Please don't paraphrase, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855
Might be an xauth issue.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Empterdose

Member

Registered: 2025-09-01

Posts: 1

Re: How to force an application to run under XWayland in a Wayland session

The value of the GDK_BACKEND environment variable is case-sensitive. You want “x11” (lowercase), not “X11” (capitalized). (Fwiw, the wiki gets this right.)

Sorry for necroposting, but this thread does rank quite highly in some search results, so I thought it might be helpful to drop a solution here.

In case it helps anyone else find this post, this is the sort of output that Eclipse produces when run with an invalid GDK_BACKEND:

$ env GDK_BACKEND=X11 eclipse
Eclipse: Cannot open display:
Eclipse: Cannot open display:
Jul 07, 2026 11:21:49 A.M. org.apache.aries.spifly.BaseActivator log
INFO: Registered provider ch.qos.logback.classic.spi.LogbackServiceProvider of service org.slf4j.spi.SLF4JServiceProvider in bundle ch.qos.logback.classic
11:21:52.381 [Start Level: Equinox Container: 26580bd4-4107-4189-90b1-4fe2e211815d] DEBUG org.eclipse.jgit.internal.util.ShutdownHook -- register org.eclipse.jgit.util.FS$FileStoreAttributes$$Lambda/0x00007f1ecc21c620@539f41f5 with shutdown hook
11:21:52.381 [Start Level: Equinox Container: 26580bd4-4107-4189-90b1-4fe2e211815d] DEBUG org.eclipse.jgit.internal.util.ShutdownHook -- register org.eclipse.jgit.util.FS$FileStoreAttributes$$Lambda/0x00007f1ecc21c620@539f41f5 with shutdown hook
11:21:53.381 [ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1] DEBUG org.eclipse.jgit.internal.util.ShutdownHook -- Cleanup org.eclipse.jgit.util.FS$FileStoreAttributes$$Lambda/0x00007f1ecc21c620@539f41f5 during JVM shutdown
11:21:53.381 [ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1] DEBUG org.eclipse.jgit.internal.util.ShutdownHook -- Cleanup org.eclipse.jgit.util.FS$FileStoreAttributes$$Lambda/0x00007f1ecc21c620@539f41f5 during JVM shutdown
Eclipse: Cannot open display:
Eclipse:
An error has occurred. See the log file
/home/mrd/.eclipse/org.eclipse.platform_4.40.0_155965261_linux_gtk_x86_64/configuration/1783419707541.log.

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 13,595

Website

Re: How to force an application to run under XWayland in a Wayland session

Mod note: Closing this old topic.

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