I’m experiencing a severe and reproducible memory leak affecting all Chromium-based applications (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Visual Studio Code) on my Fedora 44 Workstation. The memory usage of these applications grows linearly over time, eventually consuming 8+ GB of RAM and causing system sluggishness.
Environment:
- OS: Fedora 44 Workstation (fresh install)
- Kernel: 7.0.11-200.fc44.x86_64
- Desktop: GNOME 50 (Wayland only — X11 session is no longer available in Fedora 44)[reference:0]
- Graphics: Mesa 26.0.8 (Compatibility Profile)
- Affected applications:
- Google Chrome: 149.0.7827.53 (Official Build)
- Microsoft Edge:149.0.4022.98 (Official build) (64-bit)
- Visual Studio Code: (1.126.0 stable, Electron-based)
Steps to Reproduce:
- Launch any Chromium-based application with a clean profile and all extensions disabled:
google-chrome-stable --disable-extensions --user-data-dir=/tmp/clean-profile
or for VSCode:
bash
code --disable-extensions --user-data-dir=/tmp/clean-vscode
Open a typical set of tabs (e.g., Gmail, YouTube, GitHub, documentation pages).
Leave the application running for 4–6 hours with minimal interaction.
Monitor memory usage via GNOME System Monitor or the application's built-in Task Manager (Shift+Esc for browsers).
Actual Result:
The main process memory usage continuously increases over time.
After ~4 hours, memory consumption reaches 6–8 GB and continues to grow.
System becomes sluggish; swap may be used; OOM killer may eventually terminate the process.
This occurs regardless of the flags used.
Expected Result:
Memory usage should plateau after initial page loads and remain stable (e.g., ~1–2 GB) during idle periods.
What I’ve Already Tried (with no effect):
Disabling GPU acceleration (--disable-gpu)
Forcing X11 backend (--ozone-platform=x11)
Running with a fresh profile and all extensions disabled
Disabling all GNOME Shell extensions (tested with both dash-to-dock and dash-to-panel — the leak persists in both cases, so dash-to-dock is not the root cause)
Updating to the latest stable versions of all applications
Cleaning all cache directories (~/.cache/mesa_shader_cache/, ~/.config/*/GPUCache, etc.)
Setting MALLOC_CHECK_=3 — no heap corruption output
Adjusting VSCode's files.watcherExclude to exclude node_modules, dist, etc.
Additional Observations:
Firefox (using native Wayland) does NOT exhibit this leak under the same workload, suggesting the issue is specific to the Chromium/Electron ecosystem.
The leak is observed in ALL Chromium-based applications (Chrome, Edge, VSCode), indicating a common root cause rather than an application-specific bug.
journalctl shows repeated GNOME Shell warnings:
text
gnome-shell[3282]: Can't update stage views actor ... is on because it needs an allocation.
These persist even with all GNOME Shell extensions disabled, suggesting a deeper compositor interaction issue.
No obvious GPU-related errors appear in dmesg or journalctl; the leak appears to be in user-space memory (heap or shared memory).
I've already filed this issue with the Chromium and VSCode upstream trackers, but since the problem manifests across all Chromium-based applications on Fedora 44, it may be related to Fedora's packaging, patches, or the specific Wayland/Mesa stack.
Suspected Areas:
Wayland buffer management or shared memory allocation in Chromium's Ozone backend
Interaction with Mesa's GBM or DRI components (Fedora 44 uses Mesa 26.0.8)
Potential reference counting leak in the compositor communication layer
Fedora-specific patches applied to the Chromium package
Would appreciate any guidance on further debugging steps, or confirmation if this is a known issue. Happy to provide additional logs, memory snapshots, or strace output upon request.
Thank you for your time and efforts in maintaining Fedora!
