I thought I was ready for the Gnome Wayland jump after reading the Known Issues, but I can’t get GDM to work.
Before rebooting, I made sure to modify /etc/gdm/custom.conf and explicitely re-enabling wayland with WaylandEnable=true. That line was automatically deleted after reboot (I assume because true is the default), and it effectively re-enabled Wayland options. I made sure to make the Wayland flavour of Gnome the last desktop environment selected.
After the update the system defaults to i3 windows manager. It’s like systemd tries to initiate things, the text on the screen blinks a little for a few seconds and suddenly i3 is opened instead of a Gnome session (I manually installed i3 a long time ago for situations where Gnome and LXQt weren’t the best for the job).
Trying to force XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session just freezes without doing anything (for 5 minutes until I stopped waiting). Running gdm didn’t work either.
I don’t know if this is helpful, but this is my gdm’s custom.conf:
GNU nano 8.7 /etc/gdm/custom.conf
# GDM configuration storage
[daemon]
AutomaticLogin=diego
AutomaticLoginEnable=True
[security]
[xdmcp]
[chooser]
[debug]
# Uncomment the line below to turn on debugging
#Enable=true
=EDIT=
Some relevant notes I forgot to mention:
Trying to run gnome-session with Wayland gives the error Failed to start unit gnome-session-wayland@gnome.target: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Disabling the AutomaticLoginEnable option of custom.conf causes the same effect as manually running sudo gdm: a blinking _ eternally.
Despite I have lxqt-wayland-session installed, running lxqt-session still throw this error: This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem. Available platform plugins are: minimalegl, minimal, eglfs, vnc, vkkhrdisplay, wayland-brcm, wayland-egl, wayland, linuxfb, xcb, offscreen.
I’m not sure I can help but some info about the service could lead to a solution: systemctl status gdm.service should be a little more verbose then the lines in the journal.
This seems off to me, I suppose gnome needs something to render on and there is nothing. That might explain gdm reporting that no sessions as registered.
The lxqt-wayland-session reports likewise, firmware missing maybe? or gdm.gnome now needs early kms for i915?
Cool that i3 still works (tool for the job atm )
(I’m no expert, bag of salt with my best guesses, just trying to think along with you and offer routes to explore)
Edit: To verify against current majaro gnome config, use a usb stick to boot from and check if that iso works on the hardware.
Sorry for the delay, I was running some tests with lightdm and had to re-enable gdm.
● gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2025-12-15 20:14:50 -03; 2min 50s ago
Invocation: 4bed1e0b328b406dadfcdfb6dd6383a1
Main PID: 911 (gdm)
Tasks: 5 (limit: 14154)
Memory: 8.7M (peak: 10.6M)
CPU: 359ms
CGroup: /system.slice/gdm.service
└─911 /usr/bin/gdm
dic 15 20:14:54 T-1000 gdm-autologin][1796]: pam_unix(gdm-autologin:session): session opened for user diego(uid=1000) by diego(uid=0)
dic 15 20:14:54 T-1000 gdm-autologin][1796]: gkr-pam: couldn't unlock the login keyring.
dic 15 20:14:54 T-1000 gdm-autologin][1796]: pam_unix(gdm-autologin:session): session closed for user diego
dic 15 20:14:54 T-1000 gdm[911]: Gdm: GdmDisplay: Session never registered, failing
dic 15 20:14:54 T-1000 gdm-autologin][1958]: pam_unix(gdm-autologin:session): session opened for user diego(uid=1000) by diego(uid=0)
dic 15 20:14:54 T-1000 gdm-autologin][1958]: gkr-pam: couldn't unlock the login keyring.
dic 15 20:14:55 T-1000 gdm-autologin][1958]: pam_unix(gdm-autologin:session): session closed for user diego
dic 15 20:14:55 T-1000 gdm[911]: Gdm: GdmDisplay: Session never registered, failing
dic 15 20:14:55 T-1000 gdm-autologin][2101]: pam_unix(gdm-autologin:session): session opened for user diego(uid=1000) by diego(uid=0)
dic 15 20:14:55 T-1000 gdm-autologin][2101]: gkr-pam: couldn't unlock the login keyring.
I could succesfully run lxqt (X11-based) through lightdm. I could not run any kind of Gnome nor Wayland-based lxqt. Considering the last update, I assume there’s some problem with my machine Wayland configuration as a whole. But I’m so out of touch regarding Wayland that I don’t know what that could be.
Ok, I’m an idiot. It wasn’t the update what broke my set-up, it was pre-emptively following this advice to solve a known issue with this update and LibreOffice (expand the “Libreoffice 25.8.0.4 crashes on opening files” section). Doing it, broke Wayland support. Undoing it, fixed it.
Should I warn others about this in the main topic?
Only if you can identify the actual cause of your problem, and this actual cause was the result of the “prepper’s handbook”.
Better still would be to contact the person who wrote that guide and to inform them why their guide breaks systems — again, provided that it wasn’t a pilot error on your part.
For sure. I sort of knew what I was doing, but I totally underestimated how hard it could brake compatibility. That sort of was enough to make me realise my mistake hours later, but not enough to prevent the many headaches my mistake caused me.
