Problem: GNU Emacs-24 crashes at startup on elementary OS. This is due to incompatibility between the graphical toolkit used in the Emacs package.
X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) on protocol request 139 When compiled with GTK, Emacs cannot recover from X disconnects. This is a GTK bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715 For details, see etc/PROBLEMS. Fatal error 6: Aborted Backtrace: emacs[0x4f74cb] emacs[0x4dcf3e] emacs[0x4f7513] emacs[0x4b219b] emacs[0x4b420c] emacs[0x4b426d] /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6(_XError+0x12b)[0x7f78f57b654b] /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6(+0x3b5e7)[0x7f78f57b35e7] /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6(+0x3b695)[0x7f78f57b3695] /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6(_XReply+0x1e8)[0x7f78f57b4578] /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6(+0x325e0)[0x7f78f57aa5e0] ... Aborted (core dumped)
Solution: Setting the environment variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 allows Emacs to start. So use this command line to start Emacs in the terminal:
XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 emacs
Or better yet, create a launcher in ~/.local/share/applications by copying the emacs24.desktop file, and change the Exec line to
Exec=/usr/bin/env XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 /usr/bin/emacs24 %F
See [Adding Desktop Entries to System] for more information on desktop files.
