[SOLVED] GNOME May Be Unusable After libffi 3.4.2 Updates

We have discovered that the recent libffi 3.4.2 updates may cause issues with GDM and GNOME components/applications, and may render the GNOME desktop unusable. It is not yet clear which packages are affected, but we suspect that any GLib/GTK+-based applications are susceptible to this issue. We are currently investigating this issue and are actively working on a fix. If you are using such applications, please refrain from updating your system before further notice.

Update on 20221016 15:30 UTC+8: We have now made a fix available. See below.

Based on further investigation, we have found that this issue is caused by incompatibility between gjs 1.72.0 and libffi 3.4.2. This issue affects GDM and other GNOME applications that makes use of GJS. We have now made several updates available to address this issue. You may now safely update your system.

If you are affected by this issue or are unable to perform the update in a graphical environment, please execute the following commands under TTY (accessed via Ctrl+Alt+Fx) after logging in with your account:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

In order to update your system. We suggest that you reboot your system after the update.

Please note that depending on your selected mirror(s), updates may not be available until your specified mirrors have synchronised the relevant updates. You may have to wait several hours for the new updates to become available.

Should you run into any further issues, please contact us at our Telegram/IRC channels or open an issue at our GitHub repository.

— Camber Huang, Edited by Mingcong Bai