Update Obsidian AppImage installer version from 1.9.12 to 11.4.1 on Fedora 43/KDE/Wayland.
Launch Obsidian
Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? [Y/N]
Yes; I created a fresh vault with no customizations, default settings, no community plugins. Problem was immediately apparently on open.
Expected result
Obsidian UI drawing and functioning as normal.
Actual result
Window draws with significant video artifacts; window contents are incompletely drawn; menus are incompletely drawn and intermittently unresponsive. Lots of flickering and distortion. Unable to type.
Note: 11.4.1 release worked without issue while still on the 1.9.12 installer. The problem arose when I updated the installer. Problem resolves when I downgrade to Obsidian-1.9.12.
Environment
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.11.4
Installer version: v1.11.4
Operating system: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jan 8 17:35:49 UTC 2026 6.18.4-200.fc43.x86_64
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: none
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: on
RECOMMENDATIONS:
none
The installer of Obsidian 1.11.4 ships with a newer version of Electron (E39). This version of electron defaults to native wayland support (as opposed to using xwayland).
I don’t know if this is a problem with your specific computer or a widespread problem.
What are your computer specs exactly? which gpu and gpu drivers are you using?
It does feel like some Electron weirdness; I find I can’t repro it on my laptop.
Affected machine is a 2015 iMac 27” (iMac 17,1) running Fedora 43/KDE on Wayland. Specs: Intel i5-6500, Radeon 750 GPU running the lvmpipe driver.
Unaffected machine is an HP Spectre laptop 14-ea1xxx also running Fedora 43/KDE on Wayland. Intel i7-1195G7, Intel Iris Xe gpu running the Intel driver.
Adding the --ozone-platform=x11 switch did resolve the issue on the affected machine.
I am not sure I blame electron for this. This is a pretty old machine running a software-emulation driver. Maybe you have better luck (and performance) using i915 driver.
That’s completely fair. I’ve had difficulty getting any driver other than lvmpipe running on this thing; something peculiar about the “Mac edition” gpu, but I’m also accustomed to nursing it along. I’m content forcing Obsidian to use xwayland.
Just wanted to add that I’ve had the same problem on my framework 13 AMD which is running fedora 42 and KDE, I’ve applied the same workaround so I’m up and running for now. Doesn’t seem to be limited to the iMac
I can add some more details on my hardware and software configuration if that helps
newer AMD cards, including iGPU should work well with wayland. You need to double check which gpu driver you are using and maybe update your distro too.
Can confirm that after updating to the latest fedora 42 packages (which included bumping obsidian to 1.11.5), I’m not longer getting the error while starting obsidian.