AppImage Crash (Arch+Gnome Reproduced)

[psadi]

In continuation of the reported issue #12 The fix Provided in PR #13 didn't work as intended. App-image crashed with exit code 139 and the fallback logic didn't get executed (Mostly the application started and the rendering issue raised within the app hence it can't be caught runtime)

The only workaround at the moment is to execute the application with manual fallback either by running GDK_BACKEND=x11 ghostty or adding it to .bashrc / .zshrc

[CM-IV]

Same issue occurs under Aurora OS (Fedora Silverblue) w/ KDE

[Samueru-sama]

The only workaround at the moment is to execute the application with manual fallback either by running GDK_BACKEND=x11 ghostty or adding it to .bashrc / .zshrc

Or just force GDK_BACKEND=x11 in the AppRun always.

[psadi]

Or just force GDK_BACKEND=x11 in the AppRun always.

I'm leaning towards keeping things as native as possible (We could add a note in the troubleshooting section as an interim solution) as I'm unaware on the side-effects or if we miss out on any-other features by forcing x11 on Wayland systems.

[Samueru-sama]

or if we miss out on any-other features by forcing x11 on Wayland systems.

Does that mean that the appimage actually works on some wayland systems and it isn't using xwayland or similar?

If it always fails to work in wayland then adding GDK_BACKEND=x11 for now is the only solution.

[psadi]

Does that mean that the appimage actually works on some wayland systems and it isn't using xwayland or similar?

Probably yes, I can confirm from the few testing i did that this issue occurs only on Gnome based DE's. I had no issues running the AI on U24.04 (Gnome wayland) and Manjaro (KDE wayland) and i soon intend to test the same in Arch (XFCE + Wayland)

[Samueru-sama]

Probably yes, I can confirm from the few testing i did that this issue occurs only on Gnome based DE's. I had no issues running the AI on U24.04 (Gnome wayland) and Manjaro (KDE wayland) and i soon intend to test the same in Arch (XFCE + Wayland)

case "${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP}" in
    *GNOME*|*gnome*)
        export GDK_BACKEND=x11
        ;;
esac

And more checks could be added to narrow when to set the variable.

It is likely that bundling opengl will also fix the issue since we had a similar issue with webkit2gtk, the lib needs a specific version of opengl to work otherwise you get a blank screen. However that means a significant increase in the appimage size.

I've recently been experimenting with reducing the size of llvm, since that's a huge library that opengl mesa links to, and it helps 1 2 but I don't have arm versions of this library, not to mention I make it on Artix linux which doesn't even have arm support iirc.

[psadi]

case "${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP}" in
    *GNOME*|*gnome*)
        export GDK_BACKEND=x11
        ;;
esac

And more checks could be added to narrow when to set the variable.

We could add these checks if the error were to occur in all gnome based distro's. To keep things simple i think its probably better to let the users handle the fallback logic when faced (until we find a fix to pin down the rc)

It is likely that bundling opengl will also fix the issue since we had a similar issue with webkit2gtk, the lib needs a specific version of opengl to work otherwise you get a blank screen. However that means a significant increase in the appimage size.

Yeah, we could do that, but lets avoid atm to keep the AI size as minimal as possible (as this is not frequently occurring)

[psadi]

Closing this issue with a manual workaround to fallback to X11 GDK_BACKEND