How to switch between Wayland and Xorg without the cogwheel at login?

Desktop
1

I happily use Gnome 3.38.5 on Debian 11.
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE shows wayland

qemu does not grab the Super key for a macOS guest, and I’ve read that switching to Xorg could help.

Therefore I would like to switch between Wayland and Xorg.
However, there is no cogwheel at the login screen, which others report to offer options like GNOME ,GNOME on Xorg, etc.

Why is the cogwheel missing, or how do I switch without it?

As far as I understand lspci -v, a VGA driver is installed:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation TigerLake GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        DeviceName: Onboard IGD
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Iris Xe Graphics
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 166, IOMMU group 1
        Memory at 603e000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at 4000000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        I/O ports at 3000 [size=64]
        Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [40] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?>
        Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [ac] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit-
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [100] Process Address Space ID (PASID)
        Capabilities: [200] Address Translation Service (ATS)
        Capabilities: [300] Page Request Interface (PRI)
        Capabilities: [320] Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915
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2

What does the following command output?

ls /usr/share/{wayland-,x}sessions/
3 
busctl call org.freedesktop.Accounts /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User${UID} \
    org.freedesktop.Accounts.User SetSession s "gnome"

busctl call org.freedesktop.Accounts /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User${UID} \
    org.freedesktop.Accounts.User SetSession s "gnome-xorg"
4

Hi mazharhussain,
there are 4 *.desktop files.

ls /usr/share/{wayland-,x}sessions/
/usr/share/wayland-sessions/:
gnome.desktop

/usr/share/xsessions/:
gnome-classic.desktop  gnome.desktop  gnome-xorg.desktop



ls -l /usr/share/{wayland-,x}sessions/
/usr/share/wayland-sessions/:
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7829 29. Mär 2021  gnome.desktop

/usr/share/xsessions/:
total 24
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7845  3. Dez 2020  gnome-classic.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7829 29. Mär 2021  gnome.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7914 29. Mär 2021  gnome-xorg.desktop
5

Hi vgaetera,
I ran both commands but they return no output.

After reboot, still no cogwheel at the login page

6

Empty output means no errors, and rebooting is not necessary.
You need to relogin and check the output:

echo ${XDG_SESSION_TYPE}

The graphical session selector appears only after selecting a user.
It is not available to users with an empty password.

7

Thank you - that was the step I missed!
I am now running x11

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8

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