SDDM Freeze on Boot with NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti (Wayland) - Workaround & Feedback on New Update

Feedback Bugreports
1

Hello CachyOS Team,

I am writing to report a persistent issue I’ve encountered regarding the login screen freezing/hanging on boot, specifically with the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti on a Wayland setup. I also want to provide feedback regarding the upcoming switch to Plasma Login Manager mentioned in the January 2026 changelog, as I fear it might regress my current workaround.

Hardware Specs:

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

  • Motherboard: MSI Z790

  • OS: CachyOS (KDE Plasma 6)

  • Init System: Switched from Dracut to mkinitcpio (for better manual control during troubleshooting).

The Issue: On a fresh boot, the system frequently hangs/freezes right before or during the SDDM initialization. The screen either goes black or freezes on the boot animation, preventing access to the login prompt.

Troubleshooting Steps & Findings:

  1. Kernel Parameters: Verified that nvidia_drm.modeset=1 and nvidia_drm.fbdev=1 are present in GRUB.

  2. Modules: Verified that nvidia, nvidia_modeset, nvidia_uvm, and nvidia_drm are loaded early in mkinitcpio.conf.

  3. DBus: Switched back to dbus-broker (confirmed enabled).

  4. The Conflict: The issue appears to be a race condition between the NVIDIA driver initialization and the Plymouth boot splash, combined with SDDM trying to start in Wayland mode.

The Solution (Workaround) that worked for me: I was only able to achieve a stable boot by doing both of the following:

  1. Removing Plymouth: Removed the plymouth hook from /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.

  2. Forcing X11 for Login: Explicitly forced SDDM to use X11, while keeping the user session on Wayland.

    • Config: /etc/sddm.conf.d/force-x11.conf

    • Content:

      Ini, TOML

      [General]
DisplayServer=x11

Feedback on January 2026 Announcement: I noticed the announcement regarding the switch to Plasma Login Manager and the removal of Xorg dependencies for Wayland environments.

Given that my system (RTX 5070 Ti) currently cannot boot reliably into a Wayland-based login screen (SDDM-Wayland freezes, but SDDM-X11 works perfectly), I am concerned that moving to a pure Wayland login manager (Plasma Login Manager) without an X11 fallback option might break my system or reintroduce the freeze loop.

I wanted to share this data point so you are aware that high-end NVIDIA 50-series cards may still require X11 for the display manager initialization phase.

Attachments (Current Configuration):

1. /etc/mkinitcpio.conf (Working setup):

Bash

MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf block keyboard keymap consolefont filesystems)
# Note: Plymouth hook removed

2. /etc/default/grub:

Bash

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='nowatchdog nvme_load=YES zswap.enabled=0 loglevel=3 modprobe.blacklist=spd5118,snd_hda_intel,kvm_amd video=2560x1440 nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia_drm.fbdev=1 ahci.mobile_lpm_policy=0 ibt=off'

Thank you for your hard work on CachyOS :slight_smile:

2

I wonder if it has anything to do with SDDM initially running as X11?
I have Nvidia 4070 ti super
No issues whatsoever logging in SDDM & Plamsa Wayland

The differences from your setup are as follows:

I do have SDDM configured to use Wayland:
[Wayland]
CompositorCommand=kwin_wayland --drm --no-lockscreen --no-global-shortcuts --locale1 --inputmethod plasma-keyboard

  1. I uninstalled Plymouth - no need for it here.
  2. I use Dracut because manual intervention is needed less.
  3. I primarily use Plasma Wayland.
  4. I do not have any Grub commandline options used for nvidia (nvidia_drm.modeset=1 and nvidia_drm.fbdev=1) - (apparently not needed on my system).
3

Thank you for sharing your configuration. Its interesting to see that you’ve managed a stable boot without the NVIDIA grub flags.

I have an update= After the January 2026 release, I followed the manual migration path to the new Plasma Login Manager (switching from SDDM) and performed a full system update (pacman -Syu).

Surprisingly, the new login manager is working perfectly on Wayland with my RTX 5070 Ti even without the specific SDDM-Wayland compositor commands you mentioned. It seems the combination of the new manager and the latest NVIDIA module improvements (like EnableAggressiveVblank) has resolved the race condition that was causing the freeze on my end.

Im still using mkinitcpio and keeping the nvidia_drm.modeset=1 flag for now just to be safe with this newer 50-series architecture but I might try a ‘cleaner’ setup similar to yours once the drivers mature a bit more.

Glad to see the CachyOS transition to the new login manager is handling these newer cards better than the old SDDM setup :slight_smile: