No GUI in Pro Audio Apps (JUCE) after Update

Issues & Assistance
1

Hey folks,

I’m running a perfectly configured CachyOS Installation for Professional Audio Editing since months.
After CachyOS Updates on Monday, I have serious problems with my software.

Most Pro Audio Apps/Plugins, like Pianoteq, SurgeXT, dexed, DSP56300 Emulation and others are not showing GUI anymore, only black or nothing in standalone mode!

After trying several things and crawling the net, I suppose, that it has something to do with the Juce Environment. (all of the listed plugins are developed with Juce)

My Test-System is Intel GPU based UHD, my Main-System is Intel Iris Xe, Gnome, but I switched to KDE and installed a fresh ISO of CachyOS with the same result.
My testsystem has BTRFS and after rolling back the update, everything worked again, but my main computers hasn’t this option, so I’m stuck with it :frowning:

It’s frustrating, because I feel very comfortable with CachyOS and don’t wanna go back to Ubuntu or other Distros…. so maybe there are other Pro Audio people out there with more Linux skills, to find a solution for this mess.
This my first post at all, so you see it’s really important for me to get my cool audio stuff back :wink:

Thank you all in advance
cheers
Martin

2

Which desktop environment are you using?

I just checked Ostiris, Vavra, Nodalread, Dexed and Surge, which are running fine in Gnome and Cosmic in Renoise and Bitwig.

Erm. I overlooked the phrase where you pointed out the usage of KDE.

I switched DE because of ongoing issues with plug-ins, power management, nvidia problems and else to Gnome and Cosmic.
If you want form over content, them you should stick with plasma, but you will get the same issues after an update.

Is you graphicscard recognized and correctly handled?
Inxi -Ag

3

I think it’s worth trying a different DE and see if the GUI problem persists. You won’t have to reinstall and there will be no problems as I’ll explain in the last section.

As a preamble though

We’re on the bleeding edge of development with an Arch-based distro. Probably, if you don’t know what went wrong, either it broke due to “experimentalness” (I’d say the most common cause) or due to a hard to spot user error, which may require digging far back in your memory to see what actually went wrong. But on the plus side, this “experimentalness” is constantly in development which means your issue might be as they say, magically fixed, after a few days.

The usual procedure when something seemingly stopped working as it usually did, e.g. after an update, is to live-preview previous snapshots using GRUB menu and roll back using snapper, except you already explained this isn’t possible on your current machine, probably because during install you chose systemd-boot or ext4 filesystem. I don’t think this is user error, just preference (I use systemd boot 'cause I like the user experience more).

Why do I recommend switching DE?

I have fixed certain GUI related problems by doing this, just like PalynDrumatiX.

Also both of these environments are highly polished, so frustrations you’ll have with switching will mostly be a temporary thing since your brain needs to get used to it. (I love both KDE and GNOME). And if bottom taskbar aesthetics is on your priority list, try the GNOME extensions: Dash to Panel and ArcMenu (they’re awesome)
For installing extensions use the Extension Manager app.[1][2]

Installing GNOME alongside KDE flawlessly using Mending Wall

After installing Mending Wall you:

  1. Open the app
  2. Toggle on both Mend Themes and Tidy Menus

Next thing is installing GNOME. This can be done using a single package group called gnome[3]
But we’ll also install gnome-console to be sure since Konsole, KDE’s default terminal, will hidden from the launch menu due to Mending Wall.

sudo pacman -S gnome gnome-console

Use the default options, 'cause you can always uninstall unnecessary stuff later.
After the installation is done, log out. Now in within the login screen, there will be an option to switch the session to GNOME (some kind of dropdown menu). After selecting GNOME, log in again and you’re done! Both GNOME and KDE now work on your machine.

  1. sudo pacman -S extension-manager ↩︎

  2. ↩︎

  3. GNOME - ArchWiki) ↩︎

4

Hey, yes I tried three different devices: Microsoft Surface Go 4, Dell XPS 9310 2in1 and Dell Latitude 5490 (Testsystem)

The GPUs are properly installed, they all run great with Steamgames over Proton (Vulkan)

All of them were installed with Gnome and on all devices I got this No-GUI-Issue after the latest updates.

On the XPS I installed (like I said before) KDE Plasma for having another DE, but it didn’t help…

The latest test was:

installing a clean, fresh CashyOS (Gnome) with the November ISO on the XPS 9310…. Do nothing but installed dexed (Standalone) —> start it —> NO GUI🤷🏼‍♂️

….by the way, thx for your reply :slight_smile:

5

I can’t confirm this issue on my AMD System.
Just installed Gnome to test it. (normally using LXDE and Cinnamon)
Dexed, Surge showing gui in Standalone mode.
Maybe a mesa issue?
I’m using mesa-git.

6

News:

Finally I installed a new Update on Tuesday….after that, on all my devices the plugins were working fine again :slight_smile: but I don’t know what kind of package did this strange behavior.

Beside this fact, I bought a new Lenovo Yoga, installed Plasma instead of Gnome and all the GUI- Brightness- and Scaling-Issues are gone. I think that there is more focus on Plasma, so I drive this DE for now.
Thanks to all people here and have a nice Christmastime :slight_smile:
Cheers’
Martin

7

Hi all, hope it’s o.k to resurrect a 6 month old thread. I’m also having trouble with JUCE 8 apps - they render as a black rectangle both in REAPER and when launched as standalone (Surge XT 1.3.4, Soundbox 1.2.1). Same issue on CachyOS (current as of 2026-04-19).
My setup:

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (Ampere)
  • Driver: 595.58.03-2 (also tried 580.142-3)
  • Kernel: linux-cachyos 7.0.0-1 (also tried linux-cachyos-lts 6.18.22-1)
  • xwayland: 24.1.10-1.1 (I think I tried 24.1.8 too but yesterday is a bit of a blur)
  • Desktop: COSMIC on Wayland

Tried launching in X11 with Openbox - same black window. Also tested with an older kernel (6.18.22-1) but the bug persists.

I’m really enjoying CachyOS and I really appreciate the effort that has gone into it. Any hints would be most appreciated. I’ve spent the best part of a day trying different things and I’ve run out of ideas :-/

I also understand that we are bleeding edge so the problem might right itself after an update or two but I thought I’d say something just in case someone can think of a way to sort this.

8

It works in Plasma! (as per the other comments). Weirdly it didn’t work in X11 which threw me but I guess my hastily installed x11 with openbox was missing something (picom didn’t help). Cool… COSMIC for everything else and for music drop into Plasma