GNOME
GNOME (/(ɡ)noʊm/) is a desktop environment that aims to be simple, intuitive, and easy to use. It is made by The GNOME Project and is composed entirely of free and open-source software. Its Mutter compositor supports both Wayland and X server, and the GNOME Shell user interface is fully customizable by extensions.
GNOME is available as a module (and also especially as a module for services.xserver.desktopManager).
Installation
To use GNOME, add this to your configuration.nix:
services.xserver.enable = true;
services.xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
Excluding some GNOME applications from the default install
Not all applications that come pre-installed with the GNOME desktop environment are desirable for everyone to have on their machines. There's a way to edit configuration.nix to exclude these kinds of packages, for example as follows:
environment.gnome.excludePackages = (with pkgs; [
gnome-photos # photo viewer
gnome-tour # gnome introduction
gnome.yelp
gnome.gnome-clocks
gnome.gnome-calendar
gnome-console # binary is called kgx
gnome-connections
gnome.gnome-maps
gnome.gnome-weather
gnome.gnome-contacts
gnome.gnome-music
gnome.epiphany
gnome.gnome-characters
gnome-text-editor
]) ++ (with pkgs.gnome; [
cheese # webcam tool
gnome-music
gnome-terminal
gedit # text editor
epiphany # web browser
geary # email reader
evince # document viewer
totem # video player
tali # poker game
iagno # go game
hitori # sudoku game
atomix # puzzle game
]);
Configuration
Managing extensions
GNOME extensions are managed and configured by the program "Extension" that comes with GNOME.
Extensions to be installed system-wide by adding them to NixOS configuration in environment.systemPackages or per-user, or from the GNOME extensions website using a Web browser extension.
Dark mode
Change default color theme for all GTK4 applications to dark using Home Manager. Change myuser to the user you want to apply the configuration to.
home-manager.users.myuser = {
dconf = {
enable = true;
settings."org/gnome/desktop/interface".color-scheme = "prefer-dark";
};
};
Tips and tricks
Running GNOME programs outside of GNOME
While we are packaging GNOME platform-based applications to be largely self-contained, they still depend, for one reason or another, on some global configuration. The gnome.nix module sets all the necessary options for you but if you are running customized set-up, you might need to replicate that yourself.
For instance, if you see the following error:
dconf-WARNING **: failed to commit changes to dconf: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name ca.desrt.dconf was not provided by any .service files
you should enable dconf module:
programs.dconf.enable = true;
Many applications rely heavily on having an icon theme available, GNOME’s Adwaita is a good choice but most recent icon themes should work as well.
environment.systemPackages = [ gnome.adwaita-icon-theme ];
Systray Icons
To get systray icons, install the related gnome shell extension
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ gnomeExtensions.appindicator ];
And ensure gnome-settings-daemon udev rules are enabled :
services.udev.packages = with pkgs; [ gnome.gnome-settings-daemon ];
Running ancient applications
Long ago, in the GNOME 2 era, applications used GConf service to store configuration. This has been deprecated for many years but some applications were abandoned before they managed to upgrade to a newer dconf system. If you are running such application and getting an error like:
GLib.GException: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information
you need to add gnome2.GConf to the list of dbus packages in your configuration.nix:
services.dbus.packages = with pkgs; [ gnome2.GConf ];
After applying the update one also has restart their desktop session to refresh the user-specific dbus session.
Dynamic triple buffering
Big merge request against Mutter improves the performance of the window manager by a lot (and is already used by Ubuntu). Not merged into nixpkgs due to philosophy of nixpkgs, but users are free to add this overlay to get it too.
Currently it's adapted for Gnome 45.
nixpkgs.overlays = [
(final: prev: {
gnome = prev.gnome.overrideScope' (gnomeFinal: gnomePrev: {
mutter = gnomePrev.mutter.overrideAttrs ( old: {
src = pkgs.fetchgit {
url = "https://gitlab.gnome.org/vanvugt/mutter.git";
# GNOME 45: triple-buffering-v4-45
rev = "0b896518b2028d9c4d6ea44806d093fd33793689";
sha256 = "sha256-mzNy5GPlB2qkI2KEAErJQzO//uo8yO0kPQUwvGDwR4w=";
};
} );
});
})
];
You might need to disable aliases to make it work:
nixpkgs.config.allowAliases = false;
Profiling (with sysprof)
Install sysprof as a system package (it won't work properly if installed against users). Then enable the associated service with
services.sysprof.enable = true;
Troubleshoots
Change user's profile picture
Currently there is no way to change the user's profile picture using Gnome Control Center (see this issue) and currently there is no plan to support it officially in NixOS. However, you can modify it by copying the profile picture that you want to the path /home/$USER/.face as a workaround, i.e.
$ mv /path/to/image.jpg ~/.face
automatic login
If you have enabled auto login (with GNOME) with something like
grep autoLogin /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.xserver.displayManager.autoLogin.enable = true;
services.xserver.displayManager.autoLogin.user = "account";
than add the following (as a workaround for a current (2023)[1] problem)
# nano /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
systemd.services."getty@tty1".enable = false;
systemd.services."autovt@tty1".enable = false;
.