When using an NVIDIA GPU with proprietary drivers on a GNOME Wayland session, certain GTK-based applications fail to launch. They display an error dialog with the message: An error occurred. Could not initialise OpenGL support

This commonly affects applications like GNOME Videos (Totem), the file previewer (gnome-sushi), and other modern GNOME apps.

The issue stems from an incompatibility between how modern GTK applications try to use desktop OpenGL (gl) and how NVIDIA’s proprietary drivers handle it within a Wayland session. The solution is to force these applications to use OpenGL ES (gles), which is fully supported and stable in this configuration.

Solution (System-Wide)

This method sets an environment variable for the entire system, fixing the issue for all affected GTK applications at once.

1. Create a new script file. Open a terminal and use a text editor to create a file in /etc/profile.d/. Using sudo is required.

   1	sudo nano /etc/profile.d/nvidia-wayland-gl-fix.sh

2. Add the export command. Add the following single line to the file:

   1	export GDK_GL=gles

3. Save and Reboot. Save the file, exit the editor, and reboot your computer.

After rebooting, the environment variable GDK_GL=gles will be set for your session, and the affected applications will launch and function correctly.

Alternative: Per-Application Fix

If you prefer to only fix a single application, you can edit its .desktop launcher file.

1. Copy the launcher to your user’s local directory:

   1	cp /usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Totem.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

2. Edit the new file and find the line starting with Exec=.
3. Prepend env GDK_GL=gles to the command. For example:

• From: Exec=totem %U
• To: Exec=env GDK_GL=gles totem %U

4. Save the file and log out and back in.