How do you use the option jovian.steam.desktopSession

[dnkmmr69420]

Like can someone give me an example of having the desktop session being KDE wayland?

jovian.steam.desktopSession

[samueldr]

The session name is "plasmawayland".

[dnkmmr69420]

oh ok so like this?

jovian.steam.desktopSession = plasmawayland;

[dnkmmr69420]

or like this?

jovian.steam.desktopSession = "plasmawayland";

[samueldr]

You could try either, and see, but it's the latter, since otherwise it would refer to the variable name plasmawayland, which wouldn't be a thing in scope.

[IceDBorn]

Does this work when autologin is not enabled? Also, I tried enabling autologin and set jovian.steam.desktopSession to Hyprland and hyprland, but it just boots back to the steam deck UI.

[b-m-f]

Does this work when autologin is not enabled? Also, I tried enabling autologin and set jovian.steam.desktopSession to Hyprland and hyprland, but it just boots back to the steam deck UI.

I experience the same when setting desktopSession to gnome with:

{ ... }: {

  services.xserver.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;

  jovian.steam = {
    enable = true;
    autoStart = true;
    user = "user";
    desktopSession = "gnome";
  };
}

Edit:

{ ... }: {

  services.xserver.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;

  jovian.steam = {
    enable = true;
    autoStart = true;
    user = "user";
    desktopSession = "plasma";
  };
}

Works fine. So it should not be anything else in my config.

[xiro-codes]

I just gonna mention the session name can be found by running nix build nixpkgs#<desktop package name> and browsing the result/share/wayland-sessions/ folder its the the name of the file in there

[DylanRJohnston-FZ]

Hey @imadnyc I was having this exact same issue. I assume you were following the config in here which is the only example I could find of gnome-wayland.

You'll see in that config that they disable gdm when auto start is enabled

https://github.com/acristoffers/dotfiles/blob/007cb53614db4ff25921f504214e6eb401130d76/dotfiles/home-manager/nixos/steamdeck.nix#L22

But the hidden part is the config inherits from base where gnome is enabled https://github.com/acristoffers/dotfiles/blob/007cb53614db4ff25921f504214e6eb401130d76/dotfiles/home-manager/nixos/base.nix#L77 and pulse audio is disabled https://github.com/acristoffers/dotfiles/blob/007cb53614db4ff25921f504214e6eb401130d76/dotfiles/home-manager/nixos/base.nix#L101.

I needed to add those to my config to make it work.

  services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
  hardware.pulseaudio.enable = lib.mkForce false;

This is my full config

{ common, pkgs, modules, lib, ... }: {
  imports = with common; [
    user
    modules.jovian
    wifi
    zsh
    ./hardware-configuration.nix
  ];

  boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable = true;
  boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;

  networking.networkmanager.enable = true;
  services.openssh.enable = true;
  services.openssh.ports = [ 2022 ];

  services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
  hardware.pulseaudio.enable = lib.mkForce false;

  jovian = {
    steam.enable = true;
    steam.autoStart = true;
    steam.user = "dylanj";
    steam.desktopSession = "gnome-wayland";
    devices.steamdeck.enable = true;
  };

  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    gnomeExtensions.dash-to-dock
    # jupiter-docker-updater-bin
    steamdeck-firmware
    git
    vim
    steam
  ];

  system.stateVersion = "23.11";
}

[imadnyc]

Thanks for the writeup. Unfortunately, I did both already, and don't know why it doesn't work for me. Below, I've attached my config.

{ inputs, outputs, lib, config, pkgs, ... }: {
  imports = [
    inputs.jovian.nixosModules.jovian
    inputs.home-manager.nixosModules.home-manager 
    ./hardware-configuration.nix
    ../../generic-pc/system/default.nix
 ];

  jovian = {
    devices.steamdeck = {
      enable = true;
    };
    steam = {
      enable = true;
      autoStart =true;     
      user = "dre";
      desktopSession = "gnome-wayland";
    };
    # decky-loader = {
    #   enable = true;
    # };
  };
  services = {

    xserver.enable = true;
    xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = lib.mkForce false;
    # xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = lib.mkForce false; #it inherits it being true from generic PC - also doesn't work when explicitly to true
    pipewire.wireplumber.enable = true;
    printing.enable = true;
    udev.packages = [pkgs.gnome.gnome-settings-daemon];
    power-profiles-daemon.enable = true;
  };

  hardware = {
    pulseaudio.enable = false;
    enableRedistributableFirmware = true;
    steam-hardware.enable = true;
  };
}

I've removed unnecessary parts of the config, but I'm pretty sure that this should work. I can't figure out why this doesn't work - it looks the same as any other config. Like the commentor above, this works flawlessly with plasma5, so maybe it's something to do with the session name? Though you just said that gnome-wayland works. Maybe it's something that it's inheriting, so I'm going to try and see if making a config without imports helps, but I really don't think so.

I just checked, and there's nothing from there that can interfere, since everything is manually overriden in the deck config. Also, gnome definitely is installed, since i can launch the wayland session from the command line.

[imadnyc]

I've also taken your config verbatim and it still doesn't launch. Haven't got a clue.

[imadnyc]

Sorry to keep adding - using this as a sort of dev log so other people aren't as confused as me.

When loading my config in my nix repl via :lf <path to flake>, I noticed that the sessionNames that it accepts are only

nix-repl> nixosConfigurations.nix-deck.config.services.xserver.displayManager.sessionData.sessionNames
[ "gamescope-wayland" "gnome" "gnome-xorg" ]

This makes me wonder, how does gnome-wayland work in your config, if that's not a sessionName?

[DylanRJohnston-FZ]

Here's the repo for my config if you want to do any kind of deeper comparison https://github.com/DylanRJohnston/nixos/blob/main/hosts/steamdeck/configuration.nix

[minego]

I'm running into the same issue... I'm trying to use dwl, but it should be very similar to hyperland. They are both wlroots based.

I checked and it is listed in the session names ```
nix-repl> nixosConfigurations.nix-deck.config.services.xserver.displayManager.sessionData.sessionNames
[ "gamescope-wayland" "dwl" ]

And, I'm using the same config on other machines with greetd, and that is able to login to dwl properly, but quitting to desktop just restarted the steam deck UI.

Does anyone have tips for debugging this?

[minego]

I managed to get mine working finally! This was very confusing, but hopefully this can help some of you...

Originally I was specifying my session:

services.xserver.displayManager.session = [{
			manage									= "desktop";
			name									= "dwl";
			start = ''
                ${pkgs.dwl}/bin/dwl &
                waitPID=$!
                '';
		}];

This works on my desktop systems using greetd with regreet, but does NOT work with Jovian's greeter. So, I spent some time digging through source and trying to understand it. So, I looked at a compositor that we know does work:

Jovian-NixOS/pkgs/gamescope-session/default.nix

Line 151 in e2c026d

passthru.providedSessions = ["gamescope-wayland"];

That line was something I had not seen before. So, I updated my dwl package to provide that:

passthru.providedSessions = [ "dwl" ];

This syntax assumes that the package provides a session .desktop file, and my package does. If yours doesn't then you'll also need to update it to create that file in $out/share/wayland-sessions/$name.desktop

Then in my configuration I replaced the section above with:

		services.xserver.displayManager.sessionPackages = [
			pkgs.dwl-unwrapped
		];

So, with that it is all working!