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I installed Fedora 23 with GNOME. Then, I used the command sudo dnf install @mate-desktop @kde-desktop @xfce-desktop @lxde-desktop @cinnamon-desktopto install MATE, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, and Cinnamon. However, on the login screen, I can only choose from a few options - GNOME, GNOME Classic, GNOME on Wayland, and Plasma. Why can't I choose MATE, XFCE, LXDE, or Cinnamon? How do I enable these choices?

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Doing those installs part of the desktop, but does not install the packages to make them complete. If you install

mate-desktop cinnamon-desktop plasma-desktop xfce4-session lxde-common

that seems to get what is needed. You can see the gdm data in /usr/share/xsessions as a set of ".desktop" files:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root 711 Jul 11 11:30 LXDE.desktop -rw-r--r-- 1 root 7494 Nov 12 07:34 gnome-classic.desktop -rw-r--r-- 1 root 7551 Nov 6 10:34 gnome.desktop -rw-r--r-- 1 root 6915 Nov 9 17:54 mate.desktop -rw-r--r-- 1 root 198 Jul 2 05:03 openbox.desktop -rw-r--r-- 1 root 2051 Nov 16 05:17 plasma.desktop -rw-r--r-- 1 root 5465 Sep 12 17:54 xfce.desktop

and the actual packages owning these files

$ rpm -qf * lxde-common-0.99.0-1.fc23.noarch gnome-classic-session-3.18.2-1.fc23.noarch gnome-session-xsession-3.18.1.2-2.fc23.x86_64 mate-session-manager-1.12.0-1.fc23.x86_64 openbox-3.6.1-1.fc23.x86_64 plasma-workspace-5.4.3-3.fc23.x86_64 xfce4-session-4.12.1-6.fc23.x86_64

This thread provided the necessary clue: How to start KDE from GDM ?

Per comment, the recommended way to install a desktop is via the groupinstall feature. You would get the list of groups to install using one of these:

dnf group list dnf grouplist

(which give the same result). That shows several possibilities under "Available environment groups". For each, you could do something like

dnf groupinstall 'MATE Desktop'

but in a quick check, the dependencies were already satisfied by my earlier install. I recall from yum (and think it possible for dnf) that (like "groupinstall" versus "group install") that there's some flexibility in the parameters. The dnf manual page refers to the "@" syntax used by OP as an environment, and ignoring case and the "-" versus space in the names, OP's selection of names matches the list which I see from dnf grouplist. Based on that, it seems that OP was following the recommended procedure, but that it did not work.

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  • Would I install the packages that you named in addition to or in place of the ones the I installed? Commented Nov 28, 2015 at 11:48
  • I installed the first list, and then (curious to validate the ".desktop" files) listed the packages where those occurred. You probably want the first list, to get functional desktop environments. (I hadn't gotten around to installing Fedora23, so did this investigation to satisfy my curiousity). Commented Nov 28, 2015 at 11:50
  • +1 to this, but note that the way to install the desktop environments is via comps groups, not by the individual packages. Try dnf grouplist and dnf groupinstall. Commented Dec 2, 2015 at 20:57
  • I'm aware of the group feature, but with your reminder, and looking at the manual page it seems that the "@" syntax attempted by OP was the group feature - and that did not work as intended. My answer was however directed towards solving OP's immediate problem. Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 0:53

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