Bug 2356977 - GDM does not present installed awesome WM as option in desktop environment selector
Summary: GDM does not present installed awesome WM as option in desktop environment se...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: awesome
Version: 42
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Thomas Moschny
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-04-02 19:09 UTC by W. Michael Petullo
Modified: 2026-01-26 15:16 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2025-04-02 20:19:02 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description W. Michael Petullo 2025-04-02 19:09:50 UTC
Description of problem:
After an upgrade to Fedora 42, GDM no longer lists the awesome WM as an option in its desktop environment selector. I suspect this is related to the deprecation of X11.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gdm-48.0-1.fc42.x86_64
awesome-4.3-19.fc42.x86_64

How reproducible:
Every time

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot into GDM.
2. Select a user.
3. Select the desktop environment selector.

Actual results:
The list of options does not include the awesome window manager.

Expected results:
Using awesome as a WM should work.

Additional info:
I copied /usr/share/xsessions/awesome.desktop to /usr/share/wayland-sessions. This caused GDM to display awesome as an option. However, selecting that option and completing the login process produced the following error:

[...]
(nm-applet:18221): Gtk-WARNING **: 13:49:51.933: cannot open display: :0
2025-04-02 13:49:51 E: awesome: main:708: cannot open display (error 1)

Awesome exited after printing this error, and the system returned me to the GDM screen.

Comment 1 Neal Gompa 2025-04-02 20:19:02 UTC
You need to switch to another display manager, as GDM no longer
supports X11 sessions.

One option is SDDM:

$ sudo dnf install sddm
$ sudo systemctl enable --force sddm
$ sudo systemctl reboot

Comment 2 Baoquan He 2026-01-26 15:16:09 UTC
(In reply to Neal Gompa from comment #1)
> You need to switch to another display manager, as GDM no longer
> supports X11 sessions.
> 
> One option is SDDM:
> 
> $ sudo dnf install sddm
> $ sudo systemctl enable --force sddm
> $ sudo systemctl reboot

On my x1 laptop, awesome just hang there after I choose it in the session. When I installed below rpms, I can successfully boot and enter into awesome window manager.


dnf install gnome-session-xession xorg-x11-xinit-session

I searched it from this blog, add it here just in case someone else met this issue too like me.
https://blog.melnib.one/2024/11/30/awesomewm-on-fedora-41/


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.