Since upgrading Kubuntu from 24.04 to 26.04, Cairo Dock no longer works. It’s still available in the repositories, and seems to install ok. But running it produces an error. Uninstalling then re-installing it and the issue remains.
I know that 26.04 comes with Wayland, (with 24.04 I was using Xorg) but that should not make a difference, as for example Cairo Dock, when used with Arch-based Linux and KDE, such as Manjaro or Endeavouros works just fine with those distros, both of which use Wayland.
This is one of the reasons I’m sticking with X11 as long as possible. I’m on Arch and CairoDock installs in Wayland and opens but certain functions don’t work anymore. There are other reasons too.
Are you using a more current version than what is in 26.04? 3.5.1, from 2024 in Resolute is from 2024 as Ubuntu is getting cairo-dock from Debian sources.
Yes. Thanks for that. I currently have Cairo-Dock version 3.5.1-2.1 installed from the repositories (that’s the latest). But in Wiki, it says ‘The latest stable version is 3.6.0’, and that was released on 30th Sept 2025. That was for Ubuntu versions up to 25.10. So it looks like I’m well out of date, by at least a year.
I get a segmentation fault whenever I try to run the 3.5.1 version. so basically Ubuntu’s repositories are not keeping up to date with its latest LTS version 26.04, which is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Well, their wiki is out of date, as the latest version is 3.6.2, from December 2025, which is still older than Plasma 6.6 and Ubuntu 26.04, though I doubt this matters. The current version is available from their PPA I linked to, and it does run fine, though it pulls in ~500Mb Gnome with it.
The problem with the old version is likely that it does not work in Wayland, so you would need to install the x11 session package and log in with that if you wanted to stick with the OEM version.
(BIB) I think that’s the best solution for the moment - go with X11. I’ve just tried it, (installing the session package) and logging in with X11, and Cairo-Dock now works just fine. I don’t trust PPAs any more, and stopped using them some time ago as I’ve read some negative stuff about potential security issues with them. It’s about time Ubuntu got its repositories more up to date.
Thanks for the X11 suggestion and to the other guy who also suggested that route.
fwiw, the cairo-dock devs run the PPA. The current release works fine for me in a Wayland session. I can understand being leery of adding an unknown repo run by some random joe, but in this case, it has been around for a very long time, and is run by the project’s devs. Kubuntu have and use PPAs as well.
Not going to happen. Ubuntu is not intended to be the most current and up to date, especially with the less common, less popular software that has not been adopted by the user community, so it sits at the same version that was in Debian Testing when Ubuntu takes its snapshot for a release every 6 months.