Cannot get gdm/gnome to start on xorg - current error is "no session desktop files installed"

[round hare]

I'm trying to get gdm/gnome running on an old laptop, It works on wayland, but the performance is pretty terrible, so I thought I'd give xorg a go and see if that runs better. The GPU is an intel one.

After uncommenting "WaylandEnable=false" in /etc/gdm/custom.conf and restarting gdm it simply gives me a blank screen and "journalctl -xs | grep gdm" returns the message in the title and some messages about a core-dump. It does also mention that "gdm.service: Start request repeated too quickly."

There is no /usr/share/xsessions - which explains the main erro, although if I create a very simple gnome.desktop, I still get the same error...

I assume I'm missing either some package or config file/entry, but it's not clear what it should be.

Any help much appreciated - thanks in advance.

[runic sigil]

If you're having performance issues, try to identify and fix the underlying problem first. Since Xwayland already runs many X applications within Wayland, no need to switch to Xorg just for that.

@round hare

[round hare]

I get that - and you're right of course, but, if things run better/differently on xorg, that would in itself be useful data in identifying the problem.