I prefer Wayland. Recently some unknown packages I installed messed up the GDM3 settings so Gnome boots into X11 not Wayland. The GDM3 also boot into X11 but I fixed it by killing the Debian-gdm process, purging gdm3 and reinstalling it.
However even if GDM3 boots into Wayland now, the first login after boot persistently falls back to X11. If I logout and login again it will be wayland. If I click the login options icon and make no selection (Gnome Wayland already selected) it will also boot into Wayland. Just when it boots, I enter password but do nothing else it will boot into X11 once. The system is installed with Calamares with an EFI partition and one single LUKS1 encrypted EXT4 root partition.
Tricks that don’t work:
click username for password prompt, hit Esc and hit username again
switch to TTY2 (Ctrl+Alt+F2, will experience 1~2 sec lag), do nothing, and switch back (Ctrl+Alt+F1)
I also tried updating /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf but not helpful:
[daemon]
WaylandEnable=true
DefaultSession=gnome-wayland.desktop
If I set the system to boot into terminal by default (sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target) and start graphic manually (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm3 start), I’m always in Wayland as desired.
If I wait for about 15 seconds after the password first becoming ready, the login will be on Wayland. Falling back to X11 if I log in too promptly.
Related journalctl:
Jan 19 18:20:16 debian12-pc /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[902]: dbus-daemon[902]: [session uid=108 pid=902] Activating service name=‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ requested by ‘:1.11’ (uid=108 pid=1172 comm=“/usr/libexec/gsd-sharing”)
Jan 19 18:20:16 debian12-pc /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[902]: dbus-daemon[902]: [session uid=108 pid=902] Activated service ‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Jan 19 18:20:16 debian12-pc gsd-sharing[1172]: Failed to StopUnit service: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Jan 19 18:20:16 debian12-pc /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[902]: dbus-daemon[902]: [session uid=108 pid=902] Activating service name=‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ requested by ‘:1.11’ (uid=108 pid=1172 comm=“/usr/libexec/gsd-sharing”)
Jan 19 18:20:16 debian12-pc /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[902]: dbus-daemon[902]: [session uid=108 pid=902] Activated service ‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Jan 19 18:20:18 debian12-pc /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[902]: dbus-daemon[902]: [session uid=108 pid=902] Activating service name=‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ requested by ‘:1.11’ (uid=108 pid=1172 comm=“/usr/libexec/gsd-sharing”)
Jan 19 18:20:18 debian12-pc /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[902]: dbus-daemon[902]: [session uid=108 pid=902] Activated service ‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’ failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Jan 19 18:20:18 debian12-pc gsd-sharing[1172]: Failed to StopUnit service: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Jan 19 18:20:18 debian12-pc gsd-sharing[1172]: Failed to StopUnit service: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Jan 19 18:20:18 debian12-pc systemd[1]: systemd-rfkill.service: Deactivated successfully.