Home-manager xsession.windowManager.command (~/.xsession) ignored by gdm

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1

I have a bunch of issues with GDM.

I have set my default desktop session to KDE (Mainly that my wife will get the right default)

  services.xserver = {
    enable = true;
    displayManager = {
      defaultSession = "plasmawayland";
      gdm = {
        enable = true;
        wayland = true;
      };
    };
  };

GDM is supposed to remember a users session choice. But that information does not survive a reboot. So GDM will always default back to KDE even for me.

I had a quick look, it seems like GDM is sourcing xsession files

see /etc/gdm/Xsession

# Allow the user to setup a custom session type.
if test -x ~/.xsession; then
    eval exec ~/.xsession "$@"
fi

So the solution seemed obvious. I use home-manager to set
xsession.windowManager.command = "exec Hyprland";

I get a nice ~/.xsession file. But my default desktop session is still KDE.

2

Interesting observation. Here is where GDM stores the information on the users default session

/var/lib/AccountsService/users/tilli

[User]
Session=hyprland
SessionType=wayland
Icon=/home/tilli/.face
SystemAccount=false

This file is modified at reboot! No idea by what.

But this is clearly why GDM doesn’t remember my choice

3

That is what the defaultSession option does:

1 Like
4

Oh, I see. That’s a very odd definition of default. But I see at least why that’s happening now.

Meanwhile I was playing around with greetd and regreet. But that integration is quite a mess. Especially around Wayland.
I will be glad to return to GDM to be honest.