Fedora 43 Docker Desktop GUI won't open after reboot

General
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1

I have a fresh installation of Fedora 43. I have only installed Nvidia drivers and now docker.

I have followed these instructions to get Docker / Docker Desktop installed: Fedora | Docker Docs

Everything appears to be installed and working, I can start / stop / restart docker desktop from the CLI, but I cannot get the Docker Desktop GUI to lauch at all after the initial time it opened. This has persisted after a reboot.

I get this information from my terminal:

bcmcpher@fedora:~$ docker version
Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           29.3.0
 API version:       1.53 (downgraded from 1.54)
 Go version:        go1.25.7
 Git commit:        5927d80
 Built:             Thu Mar  5 14:29:24 2026
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           desktop-linux

Server: Docker Desktop 4.63.0 (220185)
 Engine:
  Version:          29.2.1
  API version:      1.53 (minimum version 1.44)
  Go version:       go1.25.6
  Git commit:       6bc6209
  Built:            Mon Feb  2 17:17:24 2026
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          v2.2.1
  GitCommit:        dea7da592f5d1d2b7755e3a161be07f43fad8f75
 runc:
  Version:          1.3.4
  GitCommit:        v1.3.4-0-gd6d73eb8
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:        de40ad0
bcmcpher@fedora:~$ docker desktop version
Docker Desktop CLI plugin version: v0.3.0
bcmcpher@fedora:~$ docker compose version
Docker Compose version v5.0.2

How can I get the GUI to launch?

2

Have you checked if the Docker Icon is in the top right (assuming Fedora 43 uses Gnome)? It should have a menu entry “Go to the Dashboard”.

3

Maybe it is just that the documentation you linked was not updated, but it doesn’t meniton supporting Fedora 43, only 41 and 42.

4

I’m in Gnome. I don’t see a Docker icon in the tray. I can find it and click ‘Open’ in applications menu, but it doesn’t respond or open anything.

5

I did not notice that. I’ve not worked with Fedora much (mostly Debian / Ubuntu). It didn’t occur to me that I was too recent. The last reference in the release notes of Fedora is 35 and there’s no mention of Gnome issues in the UI in the last year or so.

There’s an open PR here, but I’m pretty sure it’s not related. Nothing clearly saying it doesn’t work in Fedora 43, just pointing out Fedora versions aren’t listed / are out of data in existing docs: update: Fedora dnf command to add a repo by dabzse · Pull Request #22897 · docker/docs · GitHub

I’ve since uninstalled / reinstalled per the previously linked documentation and the problem persists.

Any ideas for next steps?

6

I don’t know if the reason of the issue is the Fedora version. We had multiple reports about the GUI not working in latest Docker Desktop versions. I think people claim it started after v4.59.1, so you could try installing that just to confirm if an older version works.

If not even an older version works, we can try to find out if Fedora 43 could be the reason or not.

7

v4.59.0 works fine for me, everything started right up.

If there’s any more detail I can provide definitely let me know. I’d be willing to try an updated fix when one is available.

Thanks for the help.

8

I can recommend checking this topic as well

But unless someone opens a ticket in the Desktop Feedback repository

The developers will likely not see these reports soon. We can sometimes let Docker know about issues, but since I cannot reproduce this and all the upgrades worked for me, I could not provide useful diagnostics. If you have time, it could help a lot if you could reinstall the new version and run diagnostics as described here

and share your diasgnostics ID with the developers on GitHub also as described in the troubleshooting guide. They can then check your logs. We have no access to those.