Fedora 42 Gimp context menu crashes system

Ask Fedora
1

Hi, guys.

I’ve recently upgraded to Fedora 42 from Fedora 41, my first time using Fedora, not so many months ago.

I’ve asked on the matrix channel if anyone with Fedora 42 had the same issue while using gimp:

When I go to Image > resize image and the scale pop-up window appears, anytime I try to click on the foldable pixels/percent option, it just completely crashes my system, to the point I can’t even open a TTY. Just force shutdown with the button.

GIMP Screenshot
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The problem reporting gnome app doesn’t show anything after these crashes.

It happened to me with Gimp 3.0.2 as Fedora Flatpak. Thenk I tried as a flathub flatpak (since it showed on the software center it would be version 3.0.4, in case it was some “old” version bug), but same situation.

Then I tried on my arch laptop (both on Gnome and hyprland), which has gimp as a repo package on version 3.0.4, and it works without any issue. So I tried installing gimp using DNF, but the same crashing happens.

And also with gimp as an appimage (3.0.4).

I can’t confirm I did the exact same thing on Fedora 41, so I can’t say for sure if it is something new or not. I remember having some gimp crashes on Fedora 41, but it was when the Fedora Flatpak version was an RC version, and I changed to running gimp 2.10 from appimage.

I disabled all gnome extensions to see if any of them was caussing and issue. I also tried login in into “gnome classic”, in case it would make any difference.

Non of the above made any difference.

  • Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition)
  • GNOME 48
  • Wayland
  • Kernel 6.14.6-300.fc42.x86_64
  • AMD 7600x CPU and 6800XT GPU (I also tried with an 570 that I have)

More system info:

  • OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 25.0.4

  • mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.4-2.fc42.x86_64

  • mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.4-2.fc42.i686

  • mesa-vulkan-drivers-25.0.4-2.fc42.x86_64

  • mesa-vulkan-drivers-25.0.4-2.fc42.i686

  • mesa-libGL-25.0.4-2.fc42.x86_64

  • mesa-libGL-25.0.4-2.fc42.i686

  • rpm -q gtk4

How could I give more info relevant to help solving the issue?

Because I honestly feel there must be some issue with something more important than this… The reason I disabled gnome extensions and even tried another GPU (even though it is older/slower) was becasue since I installed Fedora 41 a few months ago (because I liked modern Gnome looks) after years of running Debian with bspwm on my desktop, I’ve always kind of feel that some things on the system are not “snappy” or fluid enough.

[For example: every time I make a right click on nautilus (which was my file manager as well on BPWM), if i try to move my mouse quickly after making the right click, I always feel a few instants where the mouse doesn’t move, like a very short “instant” freeze.

And right now, as I’m writing these, I realize the same thing happens if I make a right click on fractal… for a few “milliseconds” it just freezes until the right click menu appears on the screen]

I started to doubt I was having “too many” gnome extensions (5), so that’s why I tried now disabling them after the crashes and before I opened the issue.

Is there any hardware problems reported either with Gnome, wayland or Fedora with my system? Because both those faulty behaviours are related to “context” windows appearing. And I don’t remember any similar “feeling” after many years of using bspwm on Debian.

Sorry for the vague rant at the end… Tell me which journals or reports I should provide in order to help identify the issue :folded_hands:t2:

2

Ah, you want a snappy desktop? On GNOME? chuckles

Mutter, the compositor used by GNOME, is the exact opposite of snappy. I ended up dropping GNOME mostly because of it. Before switching to KDE Plasma, I ended up living mostly in “GNOME Classic” (Fedora package gnome-classic-session-xsession), which uses the older GNOME2 Metacity window manager.

As to your issue, I would try recreating it under a different window manager to see if it’s a GIMP bug or an environment bug. GNOME Classic as mentioned above, is an obvious choice, or your old standby bspwm, or some other window manager with good standards support like IceWM or Openbox.

3

For now I’ll just be happy with solving the complete crashing problem.

I’ve looked into the journalctl and I don’t see anything relevant to GPU or kernel. This is what GPT says:

"There is no clear trace of the crash in the system logs — no segfault, kernel panic, or other typical crash signature is recorded. This strongly suggests that the freeze is occurring at a very low level of the graphical stack, possibly in GPU composition or hardware acceleration, in a way that prevents even the logging system from flushing or writing to disk before the system becomes unresponsive.

This is consistent with hard system freezes where the compositor or GPU driver enters a fatal state, locking the entire session (including TTY access).

One noteworthy detail from journalctl before the crash:

gnome-shell[2223]: Added device '/dev/dri/card1' (amdgpu) using atomic mode setting.

This confirms that GNOME Shell is using the AMD GPU through DRM with atomic mode setting, which is a modern method of GPU composition and display management. This setup is standard in Wayland environments, but may interact poorly with certain GTK4 rendering operations if there is a bug in the GPU driver, Mesa, or mutter."

It proposed deactivating OpenGL rendering on GIMP:

GDK_GL=disable gimp

But it didn’t help.

So it suggested trying GIMP 2.10, and it does work. This is its “conclusion”:

" This helps narrow the problem to a bug in GTK4’s rendering or interaction layer — likely involving GtkPopover or similar components — under Fedora 42’s specific GNOME 48 + Mesa + Wayland configuration.

You now have solid evidence to include in a bug report for:

  • GTK (as the likely underlying issue), or
  • Fedora (for integration/packaging bugs)"
4

Keep up the good fight! FWIW, I’m running Kinoite 42 + Flathub GIMP, and said dialog seems to work.

Screenshot_20250519_112042
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I’m unable to capture the drop down list, but I can change units to meters.

1 Like
5

Thanks for your reply.

I posted a crash report on gtk: System freeze on dropdown interaction in GIMP 3.x under Fedora 42 (Wayland + AMDGPU) (#7563) · Issues · GNOME / gtk · GitLab

I’ll give them the context of the problem not happening on KDE. That would maybe point to a compositor bug?

6

Yes, Mutter component specifically. Might be a combo of Mutter+GnomeShell or w/e the shell is called… =^)

Edit:

Looking at GIMP issue tracker, Cinnamon users are reporting the same problem. Now I’m not so sure if it’s the compositors fault or something in the GNOME stack. =^{

Double edit:

The virtual keyboard in Accessibility Settings is what is making GIMP unit menu freeze.
I have disabled it and relaunched GIMP → No freeze at all.

7

This are my current settings:

image
image362×558 39.8 KB

Do you refer to that? Because it is supposed to be disabled

8

$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-keyboard-enabled

9

You can rule out user configuration by creating a new user and checking for the problem with that login.