The GNOME Session package contains the GNOME session manager.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.
Download (HTTP): https://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-session/49/gnome-session-49.2.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 14d0c1ab840ff8a86348e333cd7835ec
Download size: 388 KB
Estimated disk space required: 7.5 MB
Estimated build time: 0.1 SBU
gnome-desktop-44.4, JSON-GLib-1.10.8, Mesa-25.2.2, Systemd-258.1 (runtime), and UPower-1.91.0
xmlto-0.0.29, and libxslt-1.1.45 with docbook-xml-4.5 and docbook-xsl-nons-1.79.2 (to build the documentation)
Install GNOME Session by running the following commands:
mkdir build &&
cd build &&
meson setup --prefix=/usr \
--buildtype=release \
-D man=false \
-D docbook=false \
.. &&
ninja
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
ninja install
If you generated the documentation, move it to a versioned directory:
mv -v /usr/share/doc/gnome-session{,-49.2}
This package creates two Xorg based .desktop files in the /usr/share/xsessions/ directory, and two Wayland
based .desktop files in the
/usr/share/wayland-sessions/
directory. Only one is needed in each directory on a BLFS system,
so prevent the extra files showing up as options in a display
manager. As the root user:
rm -fv /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop && rm -v /usr/share/wayland-sessions/gnome.desktop
--buildtype=release:
Specify a buildtype suitable for stable releases of the package, as
the default may produce unoptimized binaries.
-D man=false -D
docbook=false: These parameters disable building
documentation. Omit them if you have built the optional
dependencies.
-D x11=true: This option enables
support for X11 sessions. X11 support is deprecated and will be
removed in GNOME 50.
The easiest way to start GNOME is to use a display manager. GDM-49.2 is the recommended display manager.
It is also possible to start GNOME from the command line. However, you must still have GDM-49.2 installed for the desktop to work. In previous releases of GNOME, gnome-shell would start without it installed, but this changed in 48.0. GDM does not need to be enabled to start gnome-shell from the command line.
![[Warning]](../images/warning.png)
X11 support is deprecated and will be removed in GNOME 50. Please use the Wayland session wherever possible.
To start GNOME using xinit-1.4.4, run the following commands:
cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF"
dbus-run-session gnome-session
EOF
startx
Alternatively, to start GNOME with Wayland support, run the following command:
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session