KNIME Crashes on wayland with GDK_BACKEND=x11 on Kubuntu 25.04

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Hello

I am unfortunately experiencing crashes on knime 5.5.1 as well as 5.4.5 (+ a few prior versions too). Crashes always occur when opening a dialog box, specifically I can always reproduce the crash when going to settings->databases-> “add” button.

Curiously, when I run the 5.5.1 version on wayland (without the x11 backend variable) the crashes do not occur , but I do get blank dialog boxes which make the app unusable sadly.

Error logs suggest issues with libgdk-3 :

"# Problematic frame:

C [libgdk-3.so.0+0x525d5] gdk_window_get_screen+0x25"

knime 5.5.1 hs_err_pid6609.log (248.8 KB)

knime 5.4.5 hs_err_pid5535.log (340.5 KB)

I was also able to reproduce the same error on a different machine so it’s not a hardware issue (as was suggested in one of the forum topics I found on knime crashing)

Other things I’ve tried :

-swtiching from wayland to an x11 session (still crahsed)

-running on a xorg-native distribution (ubuntu cinamon 25.04) - did not crash but there are weird scaling issues on the classic UI

Is there any workaround/pending fix that would allow me to continue using KNIME on KDE?

Thank you!
Adam

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After a bit more digging, I found this thread related to eclipse and the same issue : [GTK] Eclipse crashes in gdk_window_get_screen starting with GTK 3.24.44 · Issue #1937 · eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform.swt · GitHub

Per the thread, installing ibus seems to have fixed the crashing! The app now runs nicely with a x11 backend. Scaling of icons/nodes is correct now once I enable “scaled by the system” option under legacy applications (x11) section in display configuration settings.

“sudo apt install ibus” on ubuntu/debian based distros specifically

could @knime Team please document it as a workaround in the installation guide/FAQ? :slight_smile: Thank you!

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Hello @Add94,

First off, apologies for the delayed response. That’s a really great find, thank you! We’ve added the fix of installing the ibus input method to our FAQ, which you can find here:

→ FAQ | KNIME

Best,
Leon

3 Likes
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Amazing, thank you! and no worries at all , glad you guys find it useful! :slight_smile: Really appreciate all the great work being put into the platform and staying true to OSS spirit by maintaining & improving Linux compatibility!