How to Configure Xorg as Default GNOME Session in Fedora

Wayland is a secure display protocol as well as a library implementing the protocol, that enables communication between your video hardware (the server) and clients (each and every single application on your system). Wayland is the default GNOME display server.

If you notice that some of your applications are not functioning as expected in Wayland, you can switch to GNOME in X11 as shown in this article.

To run GNOME in X11 on Fedora Linux, there are two ways to do it. The first is by choosing the Gnome on xorg option in the session chooser on the login screen and the second way is by manually editing the GNOME display manager (GDM) configuration as shown below.

First, determine the session number and other details by running the following loginctl command.

# loginctl

Next, find out the type of session is running by using the following command (replace 2 with your actual session number).

# loginctl show-session 2 -p Type

Now open the GDM configuration file /etc/gdm/custom.conf using your favorite text editor.

# vi /etc/gdm/custom.conf 

Then uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg display manager.

WaylandEnable=false

And add the following line to the [daemon] section as well.

DefaultSession=gnome-xorg.desktop

The whole GDM configuration file should now look like this.

# GDM configuration storage
[daemon]
WaylandEnable=false
DefaultSession=gnome-xorg.desktop

[security]
[xdmcp]
[chooser]

[debug]
#Enable=true

Save the changes in the file and reboot your system to start using xorg as the default GNOME session manager.

After the system reboot, verify again your session number and type by running the following commands, it should show Xorg.

# loginctl	# get session number from command output 
# loginctl show-session 2 -p Type

That’s all! In this article, we have explained how to configure Xorg as the default GNOME session in Fedora Linux. Do not forget to reach us via the feedback form below, for any questions or comments.