NVIDIA – New Driver – Breaks Kwin-x11
NVIDIA have released the latest of the ‘new feature branch’ drivers – 615.71.09 – and details are here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/278450/
I tested this with Fedora/Plasma/KDE and Kernel 7.2.4, and it failed, with a black screen with no background or toolbar, although I could still get a console with the right-button menu, but kwin-x11 crashed multiple times.. I reverted to the previous version – 610.57.04 – but still had to reboot – twice – before I got the correct Plasma/KDE screen etc. back..
So, for the time being, I am staying with driver 610.57.04..
Robert Gadsdon. September 10th 2026
It is not the new driver causing kwin-x11 to crash; rather, compatibility issues resulting from the failure to update Qt6 in sync are causing the taskbar and desktop widgets to malfunction.