Xorg no longer possible F42 Workstation/GNOME?

GNOME 48 has a compile-time flag to build it without X11 support: “ENABLE_X11_SUPPORT”.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm/-/merge_requests/261/diffs

Fedora 42 disabled that flag to remove X11.

You cannot install packages to re-enable X11 anymore. It only affects the GNOME edition of Fedora though. Other editions and spins still support X11.

Is that true?

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Fedora Workstation does not support the X11 session. The GNOME on X11 stuff is slated for removal upstream with GNOME 49. Fedora Workstation has used Wayland by default since 2016.

Note that Fedora KDE also does not support the X11 session either. Fedora KDE has used Wayland by default since 2021.

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Yes, that’s accurate.

We do talk about the Workstation Edition right?

How about the everything image and then tailor the DE to gnome it selves? As long as we do have gnome based spins with x11, it should be possible do it this way, being able to install gnome on x11 right?

Every user with this kind of gnome would fight alone to make things work on x11. Or at least not over the official gnome Chanel?

Wayland may be the default but X11still works if you install it manually. I just did this yesterday with Fedora 41 KDE, as a test, since GSYNC is still broken under Wayland, it’s basically unusable.

So, X11 worked fine and GSYNC worked much better under X11 than under Wayland, though still not ideal. And some AMD users have VRR/Freesync issues with Wayland too, so it’s not all NVIDIA’s fault.

After 16 years of glacial development Wayland is still missing features and stability, and forcing it on users won’t suddenly make it better.

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sounds like you have to switch to a different DE, that still supports X11, right?

Basically what Dave said, you can try switching to another Fedora Spin, Fedora XFCE still supports X11 probably LXDE and LXQT too.

Why does the package gnome-session-xsession - Fedora Packages still exist for fedora 42 and newer?

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it is still possible:

System Details Report


Report details

  • Date generated: 2025-04-10 22:25:45

Hardware Information:

  • Hardware Model: QEMU Standard PC Q35 + ICH9, 2009
  • Memory: 4.0 GiB
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 165H × 20
  • Graphics: Software Rendering
  • Disk Capacity: 21.5 GB

Software Information:

  • Firmware Version: edk2-20250221-8.fc42
  • OS Name: Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition Prerelease)
  • OS Build: (null)
  • OS Type: 64-bit
  • GNOME Version: 48
  • Windowing System: X11
  • Kernel Version: Linux 6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64
  1. sudo dnf install gnome-session-xsession xorg-x11-drivers xorg-x11-xinit
  2. switch to a text console (by pressing CTRL+ALT+F3)
  3. login
  4. launch gnome with startx

it looks like GDM doesn’t proceed the session files stored in /usr/share/xsessions.

if you don’t need GDM, you may want to switch to a different Login Manager.

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Thanks! Works good with startx on Fedora-Workstation-Live-42-1.1.x86_64.iso:


Wayland session GNOME 48 seems good too with my 1000Hz mouse with GpuTest and prime95 running (haven’t tried games yet)

Edit: I can’t get wine working and can’t test games (post)

Do note that while you can run a X11 gnome session via startx or login from another display manager like lightdm, some functionality may not be working.
(In particular, I don’t think screen lock works in those cases, or at least it didn’t used to, but I haven’t tested recently).

Both Win + L and auto-lock with display suspend work fine with startx

Try Bottles. It fits all my gaming needs, but I am just an occasionally gamer. OpenBVE (a mono app/game runs pretty shitty on (X)Wayland. Just use GE runner for recent games. Soda is fine for apps and legacy games.