Consider setting the Wayland session as the default desktop session

[Txordi00]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1754677506
• SteamOS version: 3.8 build 20250807.1000
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] Yes
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: [Yes/No] Yes (main)
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: [Yes/No] Yes
• Device: Steam Deck

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

I was yesterday very happy to receive the update to Plasma 6.4 in the main branch of SteamOS. I was left up a bit disappointed because I was expecting this update to bring the wayland desktop as the default one. Unfortunately, from gamescope you will be opening the X11 session with no choice.

Logging into a wayland session can be done by setting plasma.desktop session in /etc/sddm.conf.d/zz-steamos-autologin.conf. It works very well but that is not a solution, since after that you will log into the desktop mode when booting up the device and coming back and forth to the gaming mode is not trivial anymore.

I believe that many people would enjoy having the wayland session as the default, especially those that use SteamOS with multi-monitor setups.

Questions/comments:

1. Consider setting the default desktop session as the wayland one-time-launch one.
2. Is the default login to a X11 desktop session even intended behavior anymore? /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf shows the default session being plasma-steamos-wayland-oneshot. One would believe that that it is a wayland session :)
3. How can one set the wayland session as the default session when switching from gamescope? Trying to set it up from Settings->Colors & Themes->Login Screen (SDDM)->Behavior does not work, the settings are locked.

Thanks a lot for your help! I understand that to move everything to native wayland is slow and painful, but I am very happy otherwise with SteamOS and the Steam Deck! Keep up the work guys! :)

[HazelTreez]

I have tried to change that in KDE SDDM settings, but It automatically changes back to X11 (one time launch) after confirming the manually added password (all I want is to hide my cursor when using the touch screen)

[Sunspark-007]

There are arguments for not using wayland as the desktop session.. kicad came out very strongly against using wayland with their application.

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/

It's a problem really, there actually are apps that have issues with wayland. Accessibility ones are another (though a gaming device doesn't really worry about that as much.)

Valve will do what it wants, but Wayland is not perfect in all ways.

[shaunroselt]

Even if it's behind a developer toggle or something would be fine so that the normal user won't find it.

I personally only use it in Desktop Mode and would very much prefer using Wayland.

[Sunspark-007]

It's ridiculous really, Wayland came out 16 years ago and to this day there are still issues. I realize resource constraints and funding play a role, but it's been too long and time has moved on. A desktop environment should not be protocol based imo. So basically, everything is terrible.

I won't make a fuss if Valve moves to Wayland as I am respectful of their technical decisions, but I would like to say, I would like it if Valve did consider making some changes to process. For example, Fedora, while they might be snapshot releases much like SteamOS is, they do one thing different, they let KDE be a rolling release because of all the ongoing fixes. I think Valve should copy that. Let KDE be a rolling release even if the rest of the system is fixed. I would also like it if they considered backporting security fixes to the kernel. There shouldn't be such wide gaps. For example, I pretty much stayed on 3.4 throughout the 3.5 series because it was too buggy. I am on 3.6 now, but now 3.7 is buggy. So for me, with no kernel updates, etc. updates there is a gap and it also means I don't get video driver updates either.

Backporting security fixes is also an opportunity to update the video driver at the same time.

[johannesrld]

To be clear, half of the problems that KiCad have are either solved, not really that true, or are just things that are different about wayland without being worse, and a lot of the problems they're having are because they use wxwidgets as their UI library which has a terrible wayland implementation. For the actual issues that do remain I'm not sure if they should really be blockers, as they're pretty niche issues for applications that I'd imagine most people aren't running on their Steam Decks (such as KiCad).

A desktop environment should not be protocol based imo

X11 is a protocol as well, do you know what "protocol" means?

[Saiyaken-PHOENIX]

I agree that it would be nice to have Wayland as default for Desktop Mode; I use Distrobox for a lot of things, and copy/paste is still horrendously broken between x11 and Wayland apps. I could use the HDR functionality that's already there in KDE.

[oSoMoN]

Even if it's behind a developer toggle or something would be fine so that the normal user won't find it.

I personally only use it in Desktop Mode and would very much prefer using Wayland.

If you always run it in desktop mode, and want it to default to wayland, you can run:

$ steamos-session-select plasma-wayland-persistent

This won't solve switching from the gaming session to a plasma wayland session by default though.

[Txordi00]

Can you switch back to gaming mode from there? That's interesting, I didn't know about that command.

[oSoMoN]

Can you switch back to gaming mode from there? That's interesting, I didn't know about that command.

Yes, either clicking the shortcut on the desktop ("Return to Gaming Mode"), or running steamos-session-select gamescope.

[Txordi00]

Well then that's sort of a solution for those that use SteamOS from a monitor! Thanks for sharing! I guess that the biggest blocker for wayland is Steam Input though.

[matte-schwartz]

the desktop shortcut still doesn't work yet so you need to run steamos-session-select gamescope if you ran steamos-session-select plasma-wayland-persistent

[oSoMoN]

the desktop shortcut still doesn't work yet so you need to run steamos-session-select gamescope if you ran steamos-session-select plasma-wayland-persistent

I think that's because the desktop shortcut to return to gamescope assumes a one-shot (non-persistent) desktop session. These are the contents of the desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Return to Gaming Mode
Exec=qdbus org.kde.Shutdown /Shutdown org.kde.Shutdown.logout
Icon=gaming-return
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=false

So the shortcut simply logs the user out of the current session, but because the default session is plasma-wayland-persistent, it logs back in the same session.

[Txordi00]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/2081#issuecomment-3425022515

Yes. I think the same. Btw, I tried playing a game with winewayland from the wayland desktop session in the Steam Deck and the controls are definitely broken. Steam input it's unfortunately not working yet in wayland. At least in the Steam Deck.

[matte-schwartz]

I think there is a steamdeck-kde-presets merge request that still needs to land with the fix for the shortcut, at least based on what I remember from discussion of the new session manager structure.