Fixing X-Plane 11 “failed to get a GLX visual” error on modern Linux
On modern Wayland-based Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu 25.10+) with an NVIDIA GPU, the X-Plane 11 Installer as well as X-Plane 11 itself may fail to run, printing the following error to the console:
Whoah -- no matter how hard I tried, I failed to get a GLX visual. Something's seriously wonky on your machine.
It has been confirmed that setting the __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=mesa environment variable for both the Installer and the simulator works around the problem, for example:
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=mesa ./X-Plane\ 11\ Installer\ Linux
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=mesa ./X-Plane-x86_64
Please note that X-Plane 11 on Linux may also require the following fix:
https://www.x-plane.com/kb/fixing-x-plane-11-getting-stuck-on-will-init-net-on-linux/