Using anything aside from SDDM or GDM as the default Display Manager?

Help
1

Hey, just testing NixOS on a vm and hit to my first wall. I added ly (a minimal terminal display manager) to my packages and rebuild it. Then I switched to it by changing the line services.xserver.displayManager.sddm.enable = true; to services.xserver.displayManager.ly.enable = true; unfortunately after rebuilding that gave me the following errors:

error: The option `services.xserver.displayManager.ly' does not exist. Definition values:
       - In `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix':
           {
             enable = true;
           }
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
building Nix...
error: The option `services.xserver.displayManager.ly' does not exist. Definition values:
       - In `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix':
           {
             enable = true;
           }
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
building the system configuration...
error: The option `services.xserver.displayManager.ly' does not exist. Definition values:
       - In `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix':
           {
             enable = true;
           }
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)

So I checked the official manual and there were only examples for SDDM and GDM so I thought ly might have not been implemented yet. Is there a way around this? If not I’m fine with just changing the SDDM theme too.

edit: just tried to install openbox (minimal window manager) and added it with sevices.xserver.desktopManager.openbox.enable = true; similar results.

2

Do not try to guess option names. Look at NixOS option search, Options appendix of the manual, or man configuration.nix

Specifically, Openbox is a window manager, not a desktop manager. And ly does not appear to be well supported in Nixpkgs currently (How to use Ly display manager). Though there is a recent attempt to revive it:

4 Likes
3

Oh, I didn’t even know NixOS option search existed. Thank you!