Hi,
I’m using openSUSE Tumbleweed with GNOME and have noticed an odd issue that started a few weeks ago.
Some Flatpak apps — like Discord and Brave — stop displaying their windows after the system has been running for some time. They show up in the taskbar or as a process, but no window ever appears, and launching them from the terminal doesn’t show any clear errors.
What I’ve observed:
- After a reboot or fresh login, apps launch normally.
- After some time (min or hours), affected apps silently stop opening their windows.
- Force-killing them doesn’t resolve it consistently.
- Flatpak apps Firefox work fine and are not affected. - so far
- I’ve tried launching the apps from the terminal to catch logs or errors, but haven’t found anything clearly useful so far.
Possible cause:
I suspect this might be related to incompatibilities between recent Mesa updates and the Flatpak 24.08 runtime, but I’m not sure. - and im a noob so maybe it is something else.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of behavior recently on Tumbleweed?
Any ideas what to look into or how to debug this further?
One time, the Discord app crashed (the GUI stopped responding, but it was still possible to type in an open chat) while I was running it from the terminal. From the log, it looked like the issue might have been Mesa-related — but unfortunately, I didn’t save the output at the time.
I’m using an AMD GPU with OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 25.0.5.
I’ll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible, but the next few days are a bit busy for me.
Thanks!
@Pierwszy Hi, is your system up to date with the 20250606 release with zypper dup Are these flatpaks installed as your user or system? Have you run flatpak update?
Hi,
Looks like my system is up to date:
VERSION=“20250606”
VERSION_ID=“20250606”
All Flatpak apps are installed system-wide(?).
They all look like this:
com.discordapp.Discord system
And yes, there are updates available for Discord, Firefox, and Heroic Launcher but not for Brave (On the other hand, Brave works fine as long as I don’t use the --app parameter — when I do, it shows similar problems to the Discord app )— I’m installing them right now.
To be honest, there have been some updates over the past few weeks, so idk if it helps…
Thanks
@Pierwszy I would recommend installing flatpaks as your user not system wide.
Are you using Flatseal to set environment variables etc?
I don’t have any AMD hardware, so you might get more information from opening a console (kgx) session and running journalctl -f to see if anything pops up there if the updates don’t help.
I wonder if this is related to NVIDIA driver affecting Chrome, Slack apps - #32 by malcolmlewis - from a symptom standpoint, it seems very similar (also similar to what I noted I am seeing in that topic as well).
@pierwszy, when this happens, are you able to reproduce the issue with applications that are not installed as flatpaks?
Hi,
*Yes, I’ve already checked journalctl earlier (and tried everything “Google” suggested) but there were no relevant errors from the affected apps. Everything looks as if it’s running fine, even when the window doesn’t show up.
*About installing Flatpaks as a user . I didn’t realize that was the recommended way. I’ve always used the “Install" button from the GNOME Software center (sometime I using terminal), assuming it does what it should. I’ll try reinstalling a few apps with --user to see if it changes anything (but later).
*Yes, I’m using Flatseal, but I reset everything to default just to be sure it wasn’t the cause, but nothing changed.
*Right now, only Firefox and Brave (as long as I don’t try to run it as a web app) seem to be working fine.
For now, I’ll try rebooting, launching the apps from the terminal, and hoping the issue shows up again. If it does, I’ll paste the log here.
Thanks again for the help!
Hi,
Non-Flatpak apps seem to run fine. Right now, I see that.
It might sound strange, but it seems that apps work fine until I close them and try to open them again — then the issue appears. On the other hand, Discord sometimes stops working after a few minutes or hours of running (and i didnt close the app), so… I’m not really sure.
Sounds similar, but maybe not the same, as the other issue, then.
For me, I can make it happen with many apps (flatpak and non-flatpak) by changing my display configuration - I have 3 monitors, but I sometimes switch the middle one to another device using a script - and usually after doing that, I have some issues.
There was another post just made that suggested a potential issue with mutter 48.3 (different issue - windows not being selectable or scrollable, which I have also encountered). I wonder if that might also be related (or relevant).
Well, I’m using two monitors, and I was also thinking it might be related to the fact that I sometimes turn one of them on or off using a GNOME add-on. I can’t confirm that yet, but I’ll try to observe the situation. Right now, I’m trying to reproduce the crash somehow…
I also think that maybe some part of the Flatpak environment doesn’t shut down properly after closing the application, and that might be causing the issues. But as I said, I don’t really know anything about Flatpaks…
@hendersj it could be, it should be in the next snapshot mutter 48.3.1
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