Turns out both statements are true: gnome-shell is designed to survive Xwayland crashing, and gnome-shell might crash when Xwayland crashes.
In my case: Mar 29 11:44:48 nine gnome-shell[3392]: Connection to xwayland lost Mar 29 11:44:48 nine gnome-shell[3392]: Xwayland just died, attempting to recover ... Mar 29 11:44:48 nine gnome-shell[3392]: Can't create a GtkStyleContext without a display connection Mar 29 11:44:48 nine gnome-shell[3392]: GNOME Shell crashed with signal 5 So on my system at least, the problem is bug 1949200. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gnome-shell in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1966796 Title: gnome-shell lost connection to Xwayland To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1966796/+subscriptions -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs