Issues with i3, x11, and wayland

General system Newbie
1

Hello,

I am using gdm and i3. Yesterday I was able to use what I assume are x11 specific apps (third party Discord apps, easyfeh broke as well) and I would like to stick to x11 for gaming and screensharing. Or at the very least be able to switch between Wayland and X11. I have gone into /etc/gdm/custom.conf and added WaylandEnable=false and restarted gdm.service a few times and also a systemctl daemon-reload (unsure if necessary for this), but echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE continues to give Wayland. I am not sure where to go from here and any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Here is my inxi output as well:

Kernel: 6.19.11-arch1-1 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: i3 v: 4.25.1 Distro: EndeavourOS
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: Micro-Star model: MAG B550 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI (MS-7C91)
v: 1.0 serial:  Firmware: UEFI vendor: American
Megatrends LLC. v: 2.20 date: 08/30/2022
CPU:
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
type: MT MCP cache: L2: 4 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2994 min/max: 422/4674 cores: 1: 2994 2: 2994 3: 2994
4: 2994 5: 2994 6: 2994 7: 2994 8: 2994 9: 2994 10: 2994 11: 2994 12: 2994
13: 2994 14: 2994 15: 2994 16: 2994
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA GA104 \[GeForce RTX 3070 Lite Hash Rate\] driver: nvidia
v: 595.58.03
Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices \[AMD/ATI\] Cezanne \[Radeon Vega Series /
Radeon Mobile Series\] driver: amdgpu v: kernel
Device-3: EMEET HD Webcam C950 driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo type: USB
Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 21.1.21 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.9
compositor: Picom v: 13 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu,nvidia
unloaded: modesetting,radeon dri: radeonsi
gpu: nv_platform,nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch resolution: 1: N/A
2: 2560x1440\~144Hz
API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: kms_swrast,nvidia,radeonsi,swrast
platforms: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device
API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 595.58.03
renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070/PCIe/SSE2
Info: Tools: api: eglinfo,glxinfo de: kscreen-doctor
gpu: nvidia-settings,nvidia-smi x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Audio:
Device-1: NVIDIA GA104 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices \[AMD/ATI\] Renoir/Cezanne HDMI/DP Audio
driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-3: Advanced Micro Devices \[AMD\] Ryzen HD Audio
driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-4: EMEET HD Webcam C950 driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo type: USB
Device-5: Razer USA Seiren V2 X driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
type: USB
API: ALSA v: k6.19.11-arch1-1 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.6.2 status: active
Network:
Device-1: MEDIATEK MT7921K Wi-Fi 6E 80MHz driver: mt7921e
IF: wlan0 state: down mac: 0a:78:6d:57:b1:dd
Device-2: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE driver: r8169
IF: enp42s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 04:7c:16:59:e9:57
Bluetooth:
Device-1: MediaTek Wireless_Device driver: btusb type: USB
Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: enabled,running
rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes address: F0:A6:54:C6:C1:06 bt-v: 5.2
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 3.66 TiB used: 831.18 GiB (22.2%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 model: PCIe SSD size: 953.87 GiB
ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WD BLACK SN850X 2000GB
size: 1.82 TiB
ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD10SDRW-11A0XS0
size: 931.48 GiB type: USB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 935.85 GiB used: 131.58 GiB (14.1%) fs: ext4
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 43.6 C mobo: 30.0 C
Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
GPU: device: nvidia screen: :0.0 temp: 47 C fan: 0% device: amdgpu
temp: 37.0 C
Info:
Memory: total: 28 GiB available: 27.29 GiB used: 3.75 GiB (13.7%)
Processes: 372 Uptime: 1h 0m Shell: Zsh inxi: 3.3.40
2

Hello @voidharbinger, welcome to the forum!

I may be wrong, but i3 is for X11, not wayland. If you want wayland you can choose sway as your windowmanager. Sway is build for wayland and can use the configuration files of i3.

3

Thanks for your response! Afaik yes i3 is for x11. That is part of my confusion. I would like to be using x11 but I’m not sure how to go about that besides editing that conf file, which hasn’t done anything. Is it simply enough to uninstall wayland? Not sure what purpose I installed it in the first place for. Just don’t want to brick my system lol. Thanks again

4

Replace gdm with lightdm see if you get a better result.

5

Gdm is part of Gnome and Gnome is wayland only. This may be why it’s firing up wayland. Try swapping to another display manager like lightdm and see if that fixes it.

6

Shit was just writing. solutions are there already….. :wink:

Why GDM is fighting you:

GDM (GNOME Display Manager) comes from the GNOME project, which is built around Wayland. Even though you set WaylandEnable=false, GDM prefers Wayland and may ignore that setting. Since you’re using i3 (which is X11-only), there’s a mismatch.

You likely have GNOME or Wayland packages installed as dependencies — they’re not the issue by themselves, but GDM keeps defaulting to Wayland anyway.

Solution 1: Fix GDM (keep what you have)

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add this under [daemon]:

WaylandEnable=false
Session=i3

Then restart:

sudo systemctl restart gdm

Reboot and check: echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE should now show x11

(This might still be flaky — GDM is opinionated about Wayland)

Solution 2: Switch to LightDM (cleaner for i3)

LightDM is lighter, X11-native, and is what most i3 users run. Remove GDM + GNOME/Wayland dependencies:

sudo pacman -R gdm gnome-shell wayland
sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter
sudo systemctl enable --now lightdm

Reboot. At login, select “i3” from the session dropdown.

My recommendation: Try Solution 1 first. If it doesn’t stick, use Solution 2 — it’s simpler and will definitely work.

7

Y’all are life savers. Thank you so much. I am going to go cry and nap now haha. Lightdm works a treat. Thank you thank you

8

You can always check around for other old lazy ba’tard like me… we can either be helpful or grumpy. Either way, you win. :wink: Viel Glück!