"System Default Session" is missing in gdm

[kcr]

"System Default Session" a.k.a "run my .xsession if I've got one, else
give me gnome" seems to be missing in Lucid (and Karmic).

[broder]

Looks like upstream is already prepping an SRU for this already:  LP:398300. Since it's bundled with a GNOME microrelease, I'd expect it to take at least a couple of weeks before it hits lucid-updates.

And I wouldn't hold your breath for a fix to Karmic. The Ubuntu developers have moved on at this point.

[kcr]

FTR, I don't really care about Karmic as I don't expect it to be widely deploed around here, I just
mentioned it for completeness' sake.

[jdreed]

This is a known bug, for which an SRU exists. We won't fix it on our own.

[jdreed]

The upstream bug claims this was fixed in lucid-updates, and Anders says (in the LP report) this works on maverick. However, subsequent comments suggest that this is still broken in lucid by default, but that it works if you create a .desktop file in /usr/share/xsessions that exec's /etc/X11/Xsession.

Someone should test this, both in lucid and natty. If it's still broken in Lucid, we may consider shipping an xsession.desktop file.

[jdreed]

This works in Natty, but has been renamed to "User Defined Session". It's a little odd, in that if you don't have a ~/.xsession, you get a GNOME session but no panel. But you get Nautilus, so you can right-click, add launcher, xterm, and go from there.