AppImage crashes with SIGTRAP on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (glibc 2.39, t64)

Problem

When attempting to run the latest cursor.AppImage on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (glibc 2.39, with t64 transition), the application fails to start as a regular user. It crashes immediately with a SIGTRAP, even when disabling Electron’s sandbox using:

./cursor.AppImage --no-sandbox
# or extracted:
./squashfs-root/usr/share/cursor/cursor --no-sandbox

This makes the AppImage currently incompatible with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, likely due to the newer glibc version and changes in t64 ABI transition.


Environment

  • OS: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)
  • glibc: 2.39 with t64 transition
  • Kernel: 6.8.0-■■-generic
  • Architecture: x86_64
  • Cursor AppImage version: Latest available on GitHub Releases as of report
  • Electron Version (inferred): Embedded via AppImage

What happens

:technologist: As regular user

./cursor.AppImage --no-sandbox
  • App crashes immediately.
  • Running with gdb confirms a SIGTRAP:
Thread 1 "cursor" received signal SIGTRAP, Trace/breakpoint trap.
#0  0x000055555b5c3f86 in ?? ()
#1  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()

:man_technologist: As root (using sudo ./cursor.AppImage --no-sandbox)

  • The app opens, but:

    • It shows a warning: “It is not recommended to run Cursor as root.”
    • Any action that requires login or browser redirection fails.
    • Clicking “Sign in” does nothing.
    • The developer console shows repeated failed requests (404 Not Found) to:
https://api2.cursor.sh/auth/poll?uuid=...
  • Even setting a default browser (xdg-settings set default-web-browser chromium.desktop) has no effect.
  • The login is broken due to missing xdg-open behavior in root environment (likely DBus/XDG context missing).

Screenshot (run as root):

Diagnosis

This appears to be a combination of:

  1. AppImage incompatibility with glibc 2.39 (Ubuntu 24.04) — causing immediate crash in non-root execution, even with --no-sandbox.

  2. Login issues when running as root, because:

    • Cursor cannot trigger external browser login flow.
    • No DBus session or xdg-open is available in root environment.
    • xdg-open or gio open calls silently fail.

Suggested solutions

  • :white_check_mark: Rebuild the AppImage for compatibility with glibc 2.39 / Ubuntu 24.04+.
  • :white_check_mark: Or, provide a .deb or snap package that integrates cleanly with system libraries and login flow.
  • :white_check_mark: Ensure proper Electron sandbox fallback in newer environments with t64.

Thank you!

Cursor is an amazing project and I really appreciate the effort — hope this helps improve the Linux experience with the latest distributions.