Debian Stretch: How do I make Wayland the default?
I am running Debian Stretch 9.1 with GNOME 3 as the desktop environment and GDM for session management. I tried GNOME on Wayland from GDM (gear icon) and it works very well. I would now like to configure an autologin to GNOME on Wayland.
I am able to log into GNOME on Wayland by default without autologin. I am able to autologin but only on GNOME on X. The latter is my current configuration.
Any pointers would be very much appreciated.
What didn’t work
After reading Q&As from other distros I tried adding the following to /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf
in the daemon
section (one at a time). None of these options works. DefaultSessions
does not appear to be an option in /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas
.
DefaultSession=gnome-wayland.desktop
DefaultSession=gnome-wayland
DefaultSession=/usr/share/wayland-sessions/gnome-wayland.desktop
System info
$ cat /var/lib/AccountsService/users/marc
[User]
Language=en_US.UTF-8
XSession=gnome-wayland
SystemAccount=false
$ ls /usr/share/xsessions/
gnome-classic.desktop gnome.desktop
$ ls /usr/share/wayland-sessions/
gnome-wayland.desktop
$ cat /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable = true
AutomaticLogin = marc
The contents of /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop
and /usr/share/wayland-sessions/gnome-wayland.desktop
only differ in the Name
parameter. The other parameters (except Comment
) are as follows.
Exec=gnome-session
TryExec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application
DesktopNames=GNOME
The configuration is correct. Autologin should log a user into their previous session, it is not a parameter. However there is a bug in gdm3 which prevents it from working as expected.
- Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=851754
- GNOME (upstream): https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781825
The bug is fixed upstream: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=350650&action=diff. It is released in GNOME 3.25.3, but Stretch is at 3.22.3. Fortunately the patch applies cleanly on 3.22.3.
I built a patched gdm3.
- Instructions: https://github.com/marcv81/stretch-builder/tree/gdm3
- Binaries: https://github.com/marcv81/stretch-builder/releases/tag/gdm3_3.22.3-3fix1
The patched packages do fix the bug indeed. I can autologin with GNOME on Wayland without any configuration change.