A couple of weeks ago when Fedora 42 was released, I noticed that GDM would allow to only login to wayland sessions. Fedora devs had removed ability to login to a X11 DE with GDM in Fedora 42. After some complaints, they reversed this decision for Fedora 42, stating that Fedora 42 would be the last release with GDM X11 support, since this is the direction GNOME devs are heading anyways.
From an enduser perspective, this direction would be undesirable.
I understand that wayland is the future and X11 basically dead. So, there is no objection to GNOME itself being wayland only in near future.
As a enduser who has several DEās installed, an wayland only GDM on the other hand is inconvenient. You need GDM for screen locking in GNOME. So you kind of need to use GDM.
The need to change display manager to be able to login to a X11 DE is a sad prospect.
This is not an āend user perspectiveā: itās yours. Do not try to elevate your perspective and needs to the ones of a āgeneric end userā. End users donāt really care about X11 or Wayland; people using several DEs are also not even the plurality of the installed user base.
Then switch to a Linux distribution that caters to your requirements, and reverts changes in the GNOME session manager and login manager components.
The clock has run out on X11 sessions, but itās all free and open source software: you can take the code, revert changes, and package things yourselfāor convince somebody else to do it for you.
I start from the fact that I understand the fact that some users may have more than one desktop environment installed (personally I find it a mess, but rightly so not everyone is like me).
GDM does not support X11 sessions (at the moment), originally it was supposed to be disconnected only for GNOME (to have only GNOME Wayland), but the side effect of disabling the X11 session is that it also disables other X11 sessions.
GDM currently has an option called āEnableXorg=Trueā for the GDM config, and there is discussion about whether not to break other X11 sessions.
Also, there is a flag for Meson to compile GDM with X11 support.
The fact is that GNOME is focusing heavily on Wayland, deprecating the X11 session, and I support this thing being one who prefers Wayland.
If you want to have a discussion on a topic, do not try to pass your opinion as āthe will of the peopleā. If something matters to you, then itās enough of a justification; trying to elevate yourself as a representative of some plurality or majority of users makes it impossible to have a discussion, because it always has to start from a negative position. It is also a rhetorical trick that betrays the lack of faith in your own position. I strongly recommend watching this presentation from GUADEC 2013 on reporting UX issues.
I think its understandable that some people are gonna be sad that GDM will lose x11 session support, but thankfully this issue will be better in the future. Many other desktops already have experimental Wayland sesssions or are in the process of writing one. Give them some time Wayland is better than x11 ever was, so its only matter of time.
And those desktops/WMs that donāt plan on getting one, why not explore alternatives?
Person whoās (likely) going to be ripping out the X11 support from GDM here.
Iāll be careful to ensure that GDM is still able to launch X11 desktops. GDM itself (i.e. the login screen) will be running on Wayland. XDMCP will be stripped out. So will GDMās ability to reuse the greeterās X server for the final user session.
If launching non-GNOME X11 desktops breaks, itās a bug. Please report it.
While I agree with you on this, and people claiming to speak on behalf of all end users are often impossible to talk to, Iām not sure that this is what happened here.
Pointing out that your own perspective is from an end user is not the same as claiming to speak for all end users. Especially here: āAs a enduser who has several DEās installedā is quite specific, and doesnāt sound to me like a claim of some sort of āmajorityā. Most such claims that Iāve encountered are paired with words like āeveryoneā or ānobodyā or āobviousā or āmost usersā or similar. This is absent here
Would it have been a lot more clear if āFrom an enduser perspectiveā was phrased as āFrom my perspective as an end userā? Sure. But I suspect that there might be a slight language barrier here as well.
Thank you for your kind reply. This thread heated up way too quickly. Maybe I should have chosen my words more wisely.
I just wanted to raise my concern after the recent Fedora 42 events in regard to GDM and inquire about GNOMEās plans for GDM in regard to X11 session support.
I personally think itās good news that you try to avoid breaking support for non-GNOME X11 desktops.
So, thank you very much for your clarifications.
In fact, you just need to replace ~gdm/.config/monitors.xml with ~/.config/monitors.xml, and your GNOME session configuration is applied to GDM.
ā> Could you please make it so that this manipulation is no longer necessary?
I noticed another display issue with GDM / GNOME desktop
Summary of this topic
The problem:
When I connect a setup of 2 monitors (via a usb-c dock), the screens are detected, etcā¦ BUT the configuration of the integrated screen of my laptop changes, itās extremely annoying:
I believe GNOME regenerates the monitors.xml every time an unknown display is connected. This forces me to reconfigure the displays every time I connect my laptop to a monitor setup.
Why does GNOME regenerate the entire monitors.xml?
KDE just adds a new screen configuration below everything else. Couldnāt GNOME do it like that? It makes the most sense.
Wayland is better than x11 ever was, so its only matter of time.
