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/51/gnome-session-51.0.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 0e6d494c50405bca07f91e54d1785042
Download size: 396 KB
Estimated disk space required: 7.7 MB
Estimated build time: less than 0.1 SBU
gnome-desktop-51.0, json-glib-1.10.8, Mesa-26.1.7, Systemd-261.3 (runtime), and UPower-1.91.4
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{,-51.0}
--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.
The easiest way to start GNOME is to use a display manager. GDM-51.0 is the recommended display manager.
It is also possible to start GNOME from the command line. However, you must still have GDM-51.0 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.
To start GNOME without a display manager you need to determine your session ID, using loginctl. Once it is done, issue (we suppose the session ID is 1):
systemctl --user set-environment \
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME \
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=gnome \
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland \
XDG_SESSION_ID=1 &&
systemctl --user start gnome-session@gnome.target
The above commands do start GNOME from the command line, but do not enable complete functionality. For instance GNOME's automatic screen-blank/idle timeout doesn't work because of a complex interaction between the command-line logind session and the component responsible for both screen locking and idle-triggered blanking.
For full GNOME functionality, you must start it from a display manager.