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solsluminous

Member

Registered: 2024-12-17

Posts: 4

Multiple gnome desktop files???

Hey so I was looking around with how to add desktop environments to gdm and came across /usr/share/xsessions and /usr/share/wayland-sessions

One thing I noticed is that there are not only two identical gnome.desktop files in each folder but in wayland-sessions there was a gnome-wayland.desktop file which is confusing as checking the gnome session it already uses wayland? gnome-wayland also does not appear in the list when selecting a desktop enviroment in gdm.

Last edited by solsluminous (2024-12-17 19:38:23)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,197

Re: Multiple gnome desktop files???

You need the files in both directories so both options are presented in a display manager. If GDM runs on Wayland, then  GNOME without wayland will be the default, there would be an explicit GNOME on X11 session (but chances are GDM explicitly filters out xsessions when run on wayland)

That's probably the reason they are duplicated, so GDM can explicitly filter away "Wayland" or "X11" depending on which env it runs in. GNOME and sensible software development practices are often in conflict, as long as you can make it look pretty to an end user.

solsluminous

Member

Registered: 2024-12-17

Posts: 4

Re: Multiple gnome desktop files???

You need the files in both directories so both options are presented in a display manager. If GDM runs on Wayland, then  GNOME without wayland will be the default, there would be an explicit GNOME on X11 session (but chances are GDM explicitly filters out xsessions when run on wayland)

That's probably the reason they are duplicated, so GDM can explicitly filter away "Wayland" or "X11" depending on which env it runs in. GNOME and sensible software development practices are often in conflict, as long as you can make it look pretty to an end user.

So, from what I understand one of the desktop files isnt displayed on GDM just based on whatever GDM runs on, but in that case why have gnome.desktop in the first place when you can just display the two other distinct files anyways. Do they do different things I'm not getting or are they just there because.

This is my directory btw

(I use KDE plasma primarily, I just have gnome as a backup since its required by GDM anyway)

Sorry if I'm asking too many questions am just curious

Last edited by solsluminous (2024-12-18 01:14:08)