Kubuntu 24.04 switch to wayland produced lag, no icons, unresponsive windows button

Question

I've got a working KUbuntu 24.04 LTS installation that I've been running x11 on for a while. I wanted to switch to wayland so that I could install a window tiler I was interested in. When I installed the package through apt nothing untoward happened, but when I logged back out, selected a wayland session, then logged back in I no longer had basic operating system features like a system tray or a super menu, and my mouse was very laggy. It was even reluctant to give me a terminal, and the only way I could get out of it was by running sudo reboot in the terminal (once it brought it up--I had to click on the background several times before hitting ctrl-alt-T).

I recognize that this isn't much to go on. Happy to provide any logs or other diagnostic info any of you might suggest, but I don't really know where to start. The machine this system is installed on is a desktop system that is running an nvidia 2080 Ti with nvidia drivers that are working to the best of my knowledge. I am wondering if they're somehow 'not installed' in the wayland session? I really don't understand desktop sessions well enough to offer much more than this without prompting. My google fu also failed me when I looked around for analogous issues online.

EDIT: In response to requests for additional information, I'm using an nvidia card with the official nvidia drivers provided through the ubuntu repo. Here's the UPDATED return of nvidia-smi:

Wed Mar  5 13:00:01 2025       
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 535.183.01             Driver Version: 535.183.01   CUDA Version: 12.2     |
|-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                      |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti     Off | 00000000:0A:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   35C    P0              60W / 300W |   1152MiB / 11264MiB |      1%      Default |
|                                         |                      |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                            |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                            GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                             Usage      |
|=======================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      2724      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                          456MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3032      G   /usr/bin/kwalletd5                            3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3245      G   ...-gnu/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-kde        3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3278      G   /usr/bin/ksmserver                            3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3281      G   /usr/bin/kded5                                3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3282      G   /usr/bin/kwin_x11                            94MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3307      G   /usr/bin/plasmashell                        150MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3322      G   ...c/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1       21MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3474      G   ...86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kdeconnectd        3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3505      G   /usr/bin/kaccess                              3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3510      G   ...-linux-gnu/libexec/DiscoverNotifier        3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3626      G   /usr/lib/firefox/firefox                    296MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4034      G   ...bin/plasma-browser-integration-host        3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4868      G   ...86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/baloorunner        3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4929      G   ...yOnDemand --variations-seed-version       17MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      6926      G   /usr/bin/konsole                              3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      7635      G   ...erProcess --variations-seed-version       69MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A     94338      G   /usr/bin/konsole                              3MiB |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

And here's the return of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Root Complex
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse IOMMU
00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse GPP Bridge
00:01.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse GPP Bridge
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:03.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse GPP Bridge
00:04.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:05.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:07.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:07.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Internal PCIe GPP Bridge 0 to bus[E:B]
00:08.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:08.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Internal PCIe GPP Bridge 0 to bus[E:B]
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 61)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 51)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 0
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 5
00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 6
00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse/Vermeer Data Fabric: Device 18h; Function 7
01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller PM9A1/PM9A3/980PRO
02:00.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse Switch Upstream
03:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse PCIe GPP Bridge
03:03.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse PCIe GPP Bridge
03:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse PCIe GPP Bridge
03:08.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse PCIe GPP Bridge
03:09.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse PCIe GPP Bridge
03:0a.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse PCIe GPP Bridge
04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller PM9A1/PM9A3/980PRO
05:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (rev 1a)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
07:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Reserved SPP
07:00.1 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse USB 3.0 Host Controller
07:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse USB 3.0 Host Controller
08:00.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51)
09:00.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51)
0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU102 [GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Rev. A] (rev a1)
0a:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation TU102 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
0a:00.2 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU102 USB 3.1 Host Controller (rev a1)
0a:00.3 Serial bus controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU102 USB Type-C UCSI Controller (rev a1)
0b:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Function
0c:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Reserved SPP
0c:00.1 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Cryptographic Coprocessor PSPCPP
0c:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Matisse USB 3.0 Host Controller
0c:00.4 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse HD Audio Controller

Since it may be useful, here are my operating system's main software specs. I'm a bit surprised it doesn't say LTS next to 24.04...

Operating System: Kubuntu 24.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.12
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13
Kernel Version: 6.8.0-53-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 32 × AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
Memory: 62.7 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

UPDATE: I have now updated to nvidia driver 560 (see updated return of nvidia-smi) and have followed the instructions provided by @sassoanarchico (adding nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/default/grub, then updating grub and initramfs). Although my mouse behavior was better after reboot, I still didn't have a system tray or any other features of the desktop environment. Reading around online, it appears that Wayland with plasma 5.27 is just a mixed bag and I don't know if plasma 6 will ever come to 24.04 LTS, so there may be no workaround here...

Answer 1

Do you have enough RAM or storage available and did you complete the package installation? I had a problem with Ubuntu Unity after logging out with an open APT-GET process. If that doesn't help, try rebooting again and selecting the entry with "safe graphics". Hope this helps.

EDIT: KDE Plasma 5 (Kubuntu 24.04's default desktop)'s support for Wayland is limited. So it's best to stay with X11 until either you update to an STS with Plasma 6 or to the next LTS (26.04) which also includes Plasma 6.

Answer 2

Historically, NVIDIA's support for Wayland has been limited, often requiring users to rely on Xorg/X11. This limitation can lead to problems such as mouse lag, missing system tray icons, and an unresponsive menu button. First of all make sure you have updated your nvidia drivers. If that doesn't work, for me worked to Enable Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) for NVIDIA. To do that, you have to:

• Modify the GRUB configuration file (/etc/default/grub) by adding nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line.
• Update GRUB with the command sudo update-grub.
• Regenerate the initramfs using sudo update-initramfs -u and then reboot your system.

Otherwise you can try to check this link with a similar question.

I hope I was helpful :)