Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues

This page tracks the Wayland showstoppers throughout the stack. Showstoppers are major bugs, or missing features affecting the Wayland session but not the X11 session. This is part of KDE's Wayland goal.

True Showstoppers

These are the issues that must be fixed before we can recommend Wayland by default.

Session management

• Applications don't prompt to save unsaved work, causing data loss: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461176
• No session restore for native Wayland windows: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436318. Our session management recovery engine is based on the X Session Management Protocol and there is apparently currently no generic concept to do it on Wayland. But on Qt it's plugin-able and GNOME has had their own implementation for some time.

KWin/compositing/window management

• When the compositor crashes or restarts, non-Qt apps are killed — work is ongoing to fix this, see https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/wikis/Restarting
• Not all Sticky Keys options work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444335
• No color management or support for changing Gamma: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439135, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439135, https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/issues/11; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14 and adoption in KWin

Specifically NVIDIA issues

• Sometimes Plasma fails to launch with Wayland and NVidia (kwin_scene_opengl: Creating the OpenGL rendering failed: "query surface failed"): https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440397
• Plasma Panels sometime visually freeze: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469016
• All screen content freezes when Night Color is activated: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=468895
• Also Night Color just doesn't work at all on Plasma Wayland with NVIDIA: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=450327
• Ghost trails/graphical glitches when waking from sleep: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440397
• After waking NVIDIA-GPU-using system from sleep, sometimes text is partially or entirely missing from from QtQuick-based apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451293

Non-showstoppers

Quality-of-life issues, annoyances, problems with workarounds, etc.

Session management

• Session-restores windows go on the wrong screens and virtual desktops: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=468252 + https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421870

KWin/compositing/window management

• Picture-in-Picture windows from web browsers get a Task Manager icon and do not stay on top: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463288; requires https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 and adoption in apps using PiP windows (like web browsers)
• Windows marked "keep on top" cover up panel widget pop-ups and clipboard history menu: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466844
• Maximized XWayland apps leave pixel gaps when using a fractional scaling factor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459373
• Visual line glitches with certain fractional scale factors: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465158
• Some text copied from PDFs in Okular can't be pasted once Okular quits: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=468422

Plasma

• XEmbedSNIProxy window eats input in top-left pixel of the screen: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433079
• Global Menu is broken for non-Qt apps: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424485
• When dragging images from Firefox to the desktop, have to hold the drag 1 or more seconds over the desktop before releasing or else the desktop drop menu does not appear: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=448867
• Installed Chrome apps are grouped together with Chrome windows in Icon-Only Task Manager: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358277
• When using a Chromium-based browser in native Wayland mode, dragging an image to the desktop creates a sticky note out of it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449645
• Wrong app icon in Task Switcher for LibreOffice apps: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-77182

Qt

• QDockWidget does not visually move when moving and is not re-dockable when detached: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-87332

Fixed upstream in Qt 6

These are fixed in Qt 6 but not backportable or backported to Qt 5.

• plasmashell crashes when hovering or clicking items on the Panel due to "zwp_linux_buffer_params_v1.add" protocol error: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=447717; fixed in Qt 6.3
• Wrong positioning of context menu in multiple screens: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436016 / https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-85297; fixed in Qt 6.4
• When using a fractional scale factor, native Wayland apps are slightly blurry: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446674; fixed in Qt 6.6
• Changing scale causes Qt-based software to become blurry until restarted: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-78327; fixed in Qt 6.6
• Apps using QDesktopServices::openUrl()/Qt.openUrlExternally don't raise existing windows in the activated app: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwayland/+/321246 and https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/447556; fixed in Qt 6.5
• QMenus appear as standalone windows when opened using a stylus: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-111130; fixed in Qt 6.6 - https://github.com/qt/qtwayland/commit/59fae923d72eaf640035237ae6ddb1ccfeba2210
• When the compositor crashes or restarts, Qt apps are killed - Fixed in Qt 6.5
• In multi-monitor setups with at least one scaled display, Context menus have items which are invisible until hovered: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-93380 - Fixed in Qt 6.6