Usage of signal Desktop not possible in Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop

marioz · November 12, 2025, 12:30pm

Hello everybody,

thanks to the community for the possibility to ask questions here. I am a bit shocked after friends with knowhow recommended Fedora and spoke well about it.
There are several interesting and useful applications in Fedora, but I can not use Signal-Desktop in Fedora 43. No matter whether I install it via snap or via flathub. After klicking on signal it lights up in the task bar but nothing happens.
Using Fedora 42 until last week, I could start signal-desktop, but after clicking a few times on buttons, signal collapsed and crashed the whole system.
Is there anybody with experiences similar to this?
Dear developers, this is a heavy restriction and with this Fedora is not competitive for many users. In Debian and in openSUSE signal-desktop works fine without any affliction.
I would be very appreciative for any feedback,
thanks in advance
with kind regards

anothermindbomb · November 12, 2025, 3:42pm

Open up a terminal and execute journalctl -f in it. You’ll get running output appearing of the system messages.
Start signal,
Post whatever appears when you do so.

That should get us started on what the issue is for you - I don’t use signal myself, but if you tell me how you installed it, I’ll try to replicate it.

wbo · November 12, 2025, 5:10pm

openSuse maintains a DNF repo dedicated to Signal client for Fedora

$ dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/im:/signal/Fedora_43/network:im:signal.repo

The frequently published updates sometime fail temporarily because a required dependency is still not synced to the repo. Besides this no problems were observed.

l-c-g · November 12, 2025, 5:46pm

No, the Flatpak works for me on multiple machines since F38 or possibly earlier. First on Fedora Workstation (Gnome) and since I think F40 on KDE Plasma.

Do you have an Nvidia GPU by any chance? I seem to remember some issues with Electron and GPU acceleration on Nvidia. But I before I go digging for that, I would like to know if this might really be your issue.

marioz · November 14, 2025, 1:23pm

No. My CPU is an AMD Ryzen 5 and my GPU is an old AMD MSI R6970.

marioz · November 14, 2025, 1:25pm

Thanks. Here is the output of journalctl -f:

Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box systemd[3441]: Started app-org.signal.Signal@728e7f936d3e4110b71ec9baf46d6ab0.service - Signal.
Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box kernel: usb 1-7: reset high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box systemd[3441]: Started app-flatpak-org.signal.Signal-647498571.scope.
Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: Debug: Using password store: basic
Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: Debug: Will run signal with the following arguments: --password-store=basic --enable-wayland-ime --wayland-text-input-version=3
Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: Debug: Additionally, user gave:
Nov 14 14:11:22 fedora.fritz.box systemd[3441]: Started app-flatpak-org.signal.Signal-2386867975.scope.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: NODE_ENV production
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: NODE_CONFIG_DIR /app/Signal/resources/app.asar/config
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: NODE_CONFIG {}
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: HOSTNAME fedora.fritz.box
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP undefined
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: userData: /home/mario/.var/app/org.signal.Signal/config/Signal
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7815]: LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7815]: xdg-settings
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7817]: LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7817]: xdg-settings
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: (node:2) [DEP0180] DeprecationWarning: fs.Stats constructor is deprecated.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: (Use `signal-desktop --trace-deprecation ...` to show where the warning was created)
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467095:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467262:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467323:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467385:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467440:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467496:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467561:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467616:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467668:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467736:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_manager.cc:389] SharedImageManager::ProduceSkia: Trying to Produce a Skia representation from a non-existent mailbox.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467835:ERROR:components/viz/service/gl/exit_code.cc:13] Restarting GPU process due to unrecoverable error. Context was lost.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: [2:1114/141123.472875:ERROR:content/browser/gpu/gpu_process_host.cc:964] GPU process exited unexpectedly: exit_code=8704
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531031:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531104:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531163:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531225:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531272:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531316:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531363:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531408:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531452:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531509:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_manager.cc:389] SharedImageManager::ProduceSkia: Trying to Produce a Skia representation from a non-existent mailbox.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7868]: [88:1114/141123.531569:ERROR:components/viz/service/gl/exit_code.cc:13] Restarting GPU process due to unrecoverable error. Context was lost.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: [2:1114/141123.532185:ERROR:content/browser/gpu/gpu_process_host.cc:964] GPU process exited unexpectedly: exit_code=8704
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590352:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590431:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590483:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590533:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590571:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590603:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590635:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590667:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590697:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590736:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_manager.cc:389] SharedImageManager::ProduceSkia: Trying to Produce a Skia representation from a non-existent mailbox.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7882]: [102:1114/141123.590790:ERROR:components/viz/service/gl/exit_code.cc:13] Restarting GPU process due to unrecoverable error. Context was lost.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7769]: [2:1114/141123.591390:ERROR:content/browser/gpu/gpu_process_host.cc:964] GPU process exited unexpectedly: exit_code=8704
Nov 14 14:11:24 fedora.fritz.box kernel: usb 1-7: reset high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd

Many thanks so far.

marioz · November 14, 2025, 1:27pm

Installing Fedora again using the up-to-date iso-image did not change anything. Signal-Desktop does not start.

anothermindbomb · November 14, 2025, 1:54pm

Appears to be failing to create some canvas or something to draw onto for the GPU.

If you run it from the command line with flatpak run org.signal.Signal --disable-gpu does it start cleanly or do you see the same GPU error messages?

Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467095:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467262:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467323:ERROR:gpu/command_buffer/service/shared_image/shared_image_factory.cc:931] CreateSharedImage: could not create backing.
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467385:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=SCANOUT
Nov 14 14:11:23 fedora.fritz.box flatpak[7835]: [58:1114/141123.467440:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/gpu/gbm_pixmap_wayland.cc:82] Cannot create bo with format= RGBA_8888 and usage=GPU_READ

marioz · November 14, 2025, 4:49pm

Thanks. Executing the command flatpak run org.signal.Signal --disable-gpu , signal starts properly. But only if I execute this command. I am clueless.

anothermindbomb · November 14, 2025, 5:13pm

ok - so it’s some interaction issue between the GPU, GBM and this flatpak. What that issue actually is, I’ve no idea.

You can edit the gnome menu command and add the --disable-gpu flag to the flatpak command it executes when you click the icon. Alternatively, if you can find some configuration file for signal inside the flatpak, you could probably add that flag in there. I’m not a Gnome or signal user myself so I don’t know what’s possible, but I’d be surprised if there’s not a config file or an environment variable somewhere.

l-c-g · November 14, 2025, 5:29pm

Similar to issues I had remembered on Nvidia.

Don’t edit the .desktop file (which would mean a duplicate in ~/.local/share/applications/). There is a better way, see the Signal Flathub repo:

You can set the following environment variables:

SIGNAL_DISABLE_GPU=1: Disables GPU acceleration
SIGNAL_DISABLE_GPU_SANDBOX=1: Disables GPU sandbox
SIGNAL_PASSWORD_STORE: Selects where the database key is stored. Valid options are:
    basic Writes the key in plaintext to config.json. This is the default.
    gnome-libsecret for X-Cinnamon, Deepin, GNOME, Pantheon, XFCE, UKUI, unity
    kwallet for kde4
    kwallet5 for kde5
    kwallet6 for kde6

The best way to set environment variables is through what’s called a Flatpak override:

~ > flatpak override --user --env=SIGNAL_DISABLE_GPU=1 org.signal.Signal

This is also documented in the Troubleshooting section in that repo.

anothermindbomb · November 14, 2025, 5:33pm

Perfect - cheers Lars. Should sort the OP out until someone fixes whatever the issue is. Runs without any issues on my machine, but I’m nvidia and KDE so not directly comparable.

l-c-g · November 14, 2025, 5:40pm

Radeon 780M and KDE here, works fine, too. I do have an override, though, to make Signal use kwallet to store its key material for the local data (which also requires access to the session bus):

~/.local/share/flatpak/overrides/org.signal.Signal

[Context]
sockets=session-bus;

[Environment]
SIGNAL_PASSWORD_STORE=kwallet6

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