Of the many changes planned for the upcoming GNOME 49 release, one has dominated online discussion over the past six months: plans to drop support for running on X11.

But, it seems X11 support in GNOME may hang on for an itsy-bit longer than intended.

The GNOME 49 release candidate has dropped. It brings the usual bug fixes and minor changes that bulk out the latter stages of a development cycle.

But the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) contains a major “undo” in its release notes: ‘Re-enabled X11 support by default’, with further detail:

We found it difficult to cleanly separate GDM’s ability to launch modern X11 sessions (which we intended to keep enabled in GNOME 49) from the rest of GDM’s X11 integration (which we intended to disable but leave intact for GNOME 49).

GDM 49 RC change notes

For those asking “GDM?”, it’s GNOME’s login screen. It does more than render a password entry box. It also handles the launch and management of desktop sessions system-wide, not only GNOME sessions, either.

Why was this undone?

GNOME planned to disable X11 by default in GDM (as part of its wider X11 planned removal initiative) this cycle, however it proved “quite difficult”, per a write up by GDM maintainer Adrian Vovk, who notes:

“The x11-support switch, when turned off, disables GDM’s entire X11 support, including the ability to launch X11 desktop environments. GDM no longer even looks into /usr/share/xsessions to advertise those sessions as available.”

Even plucky workarounds to isolate the horrible parts didn’t happen easily. Causing issues for users who need GDM to login to other X11-based desktop environments, like Cinnamon, XFCE, and older window managers, isn’t ideal.

Thus, the endeavour has been reverted for GNOME 49. For distributions shipping GNOME 49, users will able to launch X11 desktop sessions (those which support it) using GDM without fear of any major breakages. That includes on Ubuntu 25.10.

Worth noting: while GDM can (once again) launch X11 sessions in GNOME 49, you can’t run GNOME Shell on X11 since has been disabled, as has X11 support in gnome-session – changes which have not been ‘reverted’ alongside GDM, so… Don’t get carried away ;).

Besides, Ubuntu 25.10 has removed X11/Xorg packages from its default install. They remain in the main repositories for those who need them. XWayland is not affected by any of this and continues to handle X11 apps in Wayland-only setups.

This is but a temporary reprieve for the crusty X11 code in GDM. Vovk states the plan remains to ‘outright delete the majority of X11 support’ in GNOME 50, leaving just modern X session launching intact.

GNOME’s vision of a Wayland-first future remains clear, but it isn’t blind to implementation headaches happening off in the periphery.