Cursor freezes for several minutes on startup and randomly during use on ubuntu gnome with nvidia gpu and external monitor

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

on ubuntu 24.04 with gnome (wayland) and an nvidia gpu, cursor freezes for about 3–4 minutes immediately after launch. after it becomes responsive, it continues to freeze intermittently while coding. the same behavior can be observed in vs code under similar conditions.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. use ubuntu 24.04 with gnome 46 on wayland
  2. use an nvidia gpu with an external monitor connected via hdmi
  3. launch cursor normally (from app launcher or by opening a project via file manager)
  4. observe that cursor freezes for several minutes on startup
  5. continue using cursor and observe random freezes during normal editing

Expected Behavior

cursor should start immediately and remain responsive during normal coding without freezing.

Operating System

Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.15
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: bb2dbaacf30bb7eb9fd48a37812a8f326defa530
Date: 2025-12-30T20:30:37.151Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.14.0-37-generic

Additional Information

disabling the nvidia gpu and using the intel gpu only resolves the freezes, but external monitors stop working because hdmi is wired to the nvidia gpu
switching from gnome to kde avoids the issue, but kde performs poorly on this laptop and freezes frequently
launching vs code or cursor from the terminal is more stable than opening projects by double-clicking them in the file manager

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

2

Hey, thanks for the report.

This is a known Electron/Chromium compatibility issue with NVIDIA on Wayland. Please try these options:

  1. Disable GPU acceleration:
cursor --disable-gpu
  1. Force XWayland instead of native Wayland:
cursor --ozone-platform=x11
  1. If you’re using the proprietary NVIDIA driver, try:
cursor --disable-gpu-compositing --disable-software-rasterizer

You can add the needed flags to the .desktop file to apply them permanently.

Also, can you confirm:

  • Which NVIDIA driver are you using (proprietary or nouveau) and what version?
  • Your GPU model?

Let me know if any of these helped.