Xorg Applications not working on Wayland after update to Ubuntu 20.10

After updating my Ubuntu 20.04.1 to Ubuntu 20.10, Xorg applications won't launch.

I am using the vanilla gnome-session desktop on wayland.

It used to work well before the update, now applications like spotify, freeCAD and signal-desktop won't launch, failing with Aborted (Core dumped) (freeCAD) or cannot open display: :0 (spotify). It seems to me that these apps do not support wayland and should use the xwayland-server.

What I've tried so far:

  • these applications have been installed via snap. When I install signal-desktop through apt it works flawlessly. I thus uninstalled all snaps and the entire snapd thing and removed all configuration files (both for snap and the apps) that I could find with locate, then reinstalled them but the problem persists
  • Blender had the same problem at first, but it somehow works now after I deleted the ~/.config/blender/directory. I have however not found such directory for the aforementioned apps
  • I started an Xorg Session and tried to start the apps, they all worked.

So I guess the issue is somehow related to Wayland and / or snap, but any ideas for further debugging would be appreciated.

--> Do I have to tell the apps which display to use? If so, how?

--> Do I need to change the wayland /xwayland-server and / or snap configurations / permissions?


I'm having the same issue from 20.04 -> 20.10 with snaps like VLC & Spotify.

I did some research and found this: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/apps-wont-run-and-crash-on-gnome-wayland/20322/7

Apparently it's a new "bug". Only workaround is to use X11 for now.