VMWare workstation 25H2U1 crashes on Fedora 44 KDE plasma

Ask Fedora
1

Hi,

Recently updated to fedora 44 (from 43) and noticed my windows 11 VM will crash the workstation GUI the moment the mouse becomes active within the VM.

I’ve seen other discussions mentioning x11 but I use wayland (not even xwayland) so not sure what the culprit is. I noticed the VM continues to run, it’s just the GUI crashes. If I reopen workstation the VM is running but will crash out again if click within the vm desktop.

Anyone know the source of the issue?

If it matters, I was using workstation 25H2u1 OK on Fedora 43 KDE plasma.

I also see I have the package libx11.x86_64 installed and libx11.i686 (32 bit version) is available but not installed.

Within the fedora crashed process viewer I see these details..

PID: 14995 (vmware)

Signal: 6 (ABRT)

Timestamp: Wed 2026-05-06 10:57:26 EDT (34s ago)

Command Line: /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware

Executable: /usr/lib/vmware/bin/appLoader

Message: Process 14995 (vmware) of user 1000 dumped core.

Module libasound.so.2 from rpm alsa-lib-1.2.15.3-3.fc44.x86_64

Module libnss_myhostname.so.2 from rpm systemd-259.5-1.fc44.x86_64

Module liblzma.so.5 from rpm xz-5.8.2-2.fc44.x86_64

Module libxml2.so.2 from rpm libxml2-2.12.10-6.fc44.x86_64

Module libuuid.so.1 from rpm util-linux-2.41.4-7.fc44.x86_64

Module libdbus-1.so.3 without build-id.

Module libxcb-render.so.0 from rpm libxcb-1.17.0-7.fc44.x86_64

Module libcds.so without build-id.

Stack trace of thread 14995:

#0 0x00007fee7ec127fd syscall (libc.so.6 + 0xf57fd)

#1 0x00007fee7904c3e3 n/a (libvmwarebase.so + 0x24c3e3)

#2 0x00007fee7904c719 n/a (libvmwarebase.so + 0x24c719)

#3 0x00007fee78f51e43 Panic_Panic (libvmwarebase.so + 0x151e43)

#4 0x00007fee78f51edc Panic (libvmwarebase.so + 0x151edc)

#5 0x00007fee784f6f3e n/a (libvmwareui.so + 0x12f6f3e)

#6 0x00007fee7e26337b g_logv (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x6337b)

#7 0x00007fee7e263622 g_log (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x63622)

#8 0x00007fee7b84dc77 n/a (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x4dc77)

#9 0x00007fee7b858090 n/a (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x58090)

#10 0x00007fee7a45067d _XError (libX11.so.6 + 0x5067d)

#11 0x00007fee7a44be03 n/a (libX11.so.6 + 0x4be03)

#12 0x00007fee7a44d3d3 _XReply (libX11.so.6 + 0x4d3d3)

#13 0x00007fee7a4b8e78 n/a (libX11.so.6 + 0xb8e78)

#14 0x00007fee7a4b9d20 XkbGetMapChanges (libX11.so.6 + 0xb9d20)

#15 0x00007fee7a4b4c2b XRefreshKeyboardMapping (libX11.so.6 + 0xb4c2b)

#16 0x00007fee7b84eed8 n/a (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x4eed8)

#17 0x00007fee7b854726 n/a (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x54726)

#18 0x00007fee7b854255 n/a (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x54255)

#19 0x00007fee7b825a89 gdk_display_get_event (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x25a89)

#20 0x00007fee7b853d92 n/a (libgdk-3.so.0 + 0x53d92)

#21 0x00007fee7e25b974 g_main_context_dispatch (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x5b974)

#22 0x00007fee7e25bbe8 n/a (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x5bbe8)

#23 0x00007fee7e25beaa g_main_loop_run (libglib-2.0.so.0 + 0x5beaa)

#24 0x00007fee7be48075 gtk_main (libgtk-3.so.0 + 0x248075)

#25 0x00007fee7e7b9f0f main (libvmware.so + 0x1b9f0f)

#26 0x000056485563dac0 n/a (/usr/lib/vmware/bin/appLoader + 0x1cac0)

#27 0x0000564855639bc0 n/a (/usr/lib/vmware/bin/appLoader + 0x18bc0)

#28 0x00007fee7eb20681 __libc_start_call_main (libc.so.6 + 0x3681)

#29 0x00007fee7eb20798 __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 (libc.so.6 + 0x3798)

#30 0x000056485563a065 n/a (/usr/lib/vmware/bin/appLoader + 0x19065)

ELF object binary architecture: AMD x86-64

2

You will need to ask VMware to fix it’s software.

If you are able to migrate to native linux VM software you can remove your dependency on VMware.

I migrated my VMware Windows 11 to KVM/QEMU using Virtual Machine Manager for example.

3

Known issue with VMware Workstation

This looks to be due to VMware using a private, older version of libX11.so.6 that has a bug with Xwayland that is fixed in libX11 1.8.13 (the version shipped with F44).

For some reason. VMware is preferring their buggy private version over the updated version that’s installed in F44. The workaround seems to be to replace Vmware’s private /usr/lib/vmware/libX11.so/libX11/sol6 (no, this isnt a typo…) with /usr/lib64/libX11.so.6 (either copy over or symlink).

4

Thanks all,
I was able to get help on the VMWare forum…it was actually the link Paul posted above.
As that discussion pointed out, it related to the libx11 package and the older version of a file VMWare was using. Once I copied the Fedora version of the files to the VMWare folder, it became stable.

5

I did experiment with KVM/QEMU about a year ago but ran into problems…

-There are some feature differences. One that comes to mind is that in VMWare workstation there is a button to switch from full screen to windowed. I think with QEMU viewer it was not as convenient.

-I also would need to migrate the existing VM from VMDKs to the QCOW (and/or raw) formats and I couldn’t find a smooth way to do that.

I may try again at a later time…

6

There are tools for converting vmdk to qcow that are part of kvm software.

A web search for “ convert vmware disk to kvm” will find lots of guides to do the convert.

7

You can uninstall the VMware Workstation Pro 25H2U1 version, but leave the settings untouched. Then install the older 25H2 version and voilá, it should work. I’m using Windows 10 pro for my VMs; I had same problem as you and this fixed it for me.