X11 crashes when using wacom tablet

Ask Fedora
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1

I upgraded from Fedora 38 to Fedora 39 a few hours ago and have recently experience multiple issues with multiple applications and drivers. In particular, I’ve experience issues when using my Wacom tablet, since every time I use the pen, GNOME stops recieving mouse input until I restart it or press ALT+TAB.

The driver’s version is the following: Package xorg-x11-drv-wacom-1.2.0-2.fc39.x86_64 is already installed.

These are the system specs I’m using:
OS: Fedora Linux 39 (Workstation Edition) x86_64
Kernel: 6.4.4-200.fc38.x86_64
DE: GNOME 45.1
CPU: Intel i5-8250U (8) @ 3.400GHz
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce MX130
Memory: 4075MiB / 15861MiB

NVIDIA System Information
Operating System: Linux-x86_64
NVIDIA Driver Version: 535.129.03
NVML Version: 12.535.129.03

X Server Information:
Display Name: figaro:1
Server Version Number: 11.0
Server Vendor String: The X.Org Foundation
Server Vendor Version: 1.20.14 (12014000)
NV-CONTROL Version: 1.29
Screens: 1

2

Is there any way of returning to f38 for now? I’ve found that people have had similar problems and it has been addressed on:

3

Can you try Gnome on Wayland instead, until the X11-related fix lands in Fedora? As long as you don’t use specific features of xsetwacom (which is X11-specific), the experience under Wayland can be quite good.

4

Apparently you have not fully upgraded to F39. You report using the OLD 6.4.4 kernel from F38 and a driver package from F39 so I wonder what else may not be fully upgraded and why you have not booted with the latest kernel you have installed.

It is a fact that newer libraries and drivers often have problems with older kernels for which they were not designed.

5

I tried rebooting and then sudo dnf upgrade, but it seems I’m still on the F38 kernel

6

Last time I checked, the NVIDIA Optimus drivers and some of the GNOME extensions crash when I use Wayland. I really am unsure if switching right now to Wayland won’t worsen the situation.

7

This apparently will not work since the upgrade was not 100% completed.
Try sudo dnf distrosync --releasever 39 and see what that produces.

8

I found that the issue was that the upgrade didn’t update the grub. I runned sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and now I’m on the new kernel: Kernel: 6.5.12-300.fc39.x86_64. However, the issue still persists. I also runned dnf distrosync but it says:

[martin@figaro ~]$ sudo dnf distrosync --releasever 39
[sudo] password for martin: 
Last metadata expiration check: 0:19:20 ago on Wed 22 Nov 2023 01:34:52 PM -05.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
9

I just switched to Wayland and now everything works. I don’t know if I feel mad about RH’s decision to force Wayland on GNOME, but they must have a good reason for the transition from X11 to Wayland.

10

For the past several years it has been known that X11 is aged and cannot be fully update to meet the newer modularity structures. Fedora switched to the wayland DE as default several releases back. I delayed switching my DE away from X11 for some time but recently decided that I would try it since wayland has been steadily improving over time and I am now happy with the status.

According to the current info X11 will soon be retired from fedora.

11

btw, since some other people have had the same problem and may encounter this thread, here’s how to change from X11 to Wayland:

  1. Open /etc/gdm/custom.conf with root on any text editor.
  2. Change the lineWaylandEnable=false to true no caps.
  3. Comment or remove the line DefaultSession=gnome-xorg.desktop