Project Zomboid blank screen on Wayland - Unable to switch to X11 session via SDDM
Hi Bazzite Team/Community,
I'm experiencing an issue on my Bazzite setup (details below) where Project Zomboid launches to a blank screen, though other games seem to work fine.
System Details:
OS: Bazzite (nvidia-open:stable, version 42.20250522.1) with KDE Plasma
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3090
Current Session: Wayland (echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE confirms wayland)
Observations & Troubleshooting So Far:
A temporary workaround: If I manually kill my Plasma session (e.g., via killall plasmashell or a similar action that forces Plasma to restart), Project Zomboid then works correctly for that new session. This suggests a session state issue.
To test if this is a Wayland-specific problem, I've tried to enable an X11 Plasma session:
I successfully layered plasma-workspace-x11 using sudo rpm-ostree install plasma-workspace-x11. This is confirmed in my rpm-ostree status.
I've verified that the X11 session file exists at /usr/share/xsessions/plasmax11.desktop.
Current Roadblock:
Despite the plasma-workspace-x11 package being layered and the plasmax11.desktop file being present, the option to select "Plasma (X11)" (or a similar Xorg/X11 session) is not appearing on my SDDM login screen.
I also attempted to launch an X11 session manually from a TTY using startplasma-x11, but this failed with the error: "$DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to the X server."
My Question:
Could you please advise on how to get the "Plasma (X11)" session option to appear on the SDDM login screen on Bazzite? Alternatively, is there another Bazzite-recommended method to switch to and test an X11 desktop session?
My primary aim here is to determine if Project Zomboid runs correctly under an X11 session, which would provide a more stable workaround than killing Plasma.
Thank you for your time and assistance!
What's the End Goal?
There are a couple of layers to the end goal:
Intermediate Goal (The Immediate Next Step):
To successfully switch your desktop session from Wayland to X11.
The reason for this is purely for testing. Since Project Zomboid has issues on Wayland (blank screen until Plasma is killed), we want to see if it behaves better on X11. X11 is an older, more mature display server technology, and sometimes games (even native ones) or specific GPU driver combinations have better compatibility with it, especially when Wayland issues arise.
Primary End Goal (The Main Objective):
To get Project Zomboid to run correctly and reliably without you having to perform any unusual workarounds (like killing Plasma every time).
If Project Zomboid works flawlessly on X11, then using the X11 session (once you can access it) becomes your stable solution for playing that game.
If Project Zomboid still has issues on X11, it would suggest the problem is more complex and might not be solely related to Wayland (though the "killing Plasma" fix still points to a desktop environment state issue). In this scenario, further investigation with Bazzite support or Project Zomboid support would be needed, but at least we'd have more information.
Essentially, we're trying to isolate the problem. If switching to X11 fixes it, great! If not, it's still useful information for further troubleshooting.
I'm experiencing an issue on my Bazzite setup (details below) where Project Zomboid launches to a blank screen, though other games seem to work fine.
System Details:
OS: Bazzite (nvidia-open:stable, version 42.20250522.1) with KDE Plasma
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3090
Current Session: Wayland (echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE confirms wayland)
Observations & Troubleshooting So Far:
A temporary workaround: If I manually kill my Plasma session (e.g., via killall plasmashell or a similar action that forces Plasma to restart), Project Zomboid then works correctly for that new session. This suggests a session state issue.
To test if this is a Wayland-specific problem, I've tried to enable an X11 Plasma session:
I successfully layered plasma-workspace-x11 using sudo rpm-ostree install plasma-workspace-x11. This is confirmed in my rpm-ostree status.
I've verified that the X11 session file exists at /usr/share/xsessions/plasmax11.desktop.
Current Roadblock:
Despite the plasma-workspace-x11 package being layered and the plasmax11.desktop file being present, the option to select "Plasma (X11)" (or a similar Xorg/X11 session) is not appearing on my SDDM login screen.
I also attempted to launch an X11 session manually from a TTY using startplasma-x11, but this failed with the error: "$DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to the X server."
My Question:
Could you please advise on how to get the "Plasma (X11)" session option to appear on the SDDM login screen on Bazzite? Alternatively, is there another Bazzite-recommended method to switch to and test an X11 desktop session?
My primary aim here is to determine if Project Zomboid runs correctly under an X11 session, which would provide a more stable workaround than killing Plasma.
Thank you for your time and assistance!
What's the End Goal?
There are a couple of layers to the end goal:
Intermediate Goal (The Immediate Next Step):
To successfully switch your desktop session from Wayland to X11.
The reason for this is purely for testing. Since Project Zomboid has issues on Wayland (blank screen until Plasma is killed), we want to see if it behaves better on X11. X11 is an older, more mature display server technology, and sometimes games (even native ones) or specific GPU driver combinations have better compatibility with it, especially when Wayland issues arise.
Primary End Goal (The Main Objective):
To get Project Zomboid to run correctly and reliably without you having to perform any unusual workarounds (like killing Plasma every time).
If Project Zomboid works flawlessly on X11, then using the X11 session (once you can access it) becomes your stable solution for playing that game.
If Project Zomboid still has issues on X11, it would suggest the problem is more complex and might not be solely related to Wayland (though the "killing Plasma" fix still points to a desktop environment state issue). In this scenario, further investigation with Bazzite support or Project Zomboid support would be needed, but at least we'd have more information.
Essentially, we're trying to isolate the problem. If switching to X11 fixes it, great! If not, it's still useful information for further troubleshooting.
