# X Window System {#sec-x11}

The X Window System (X11) provides the basis of NixOS' graphical user
interface. It can be enabled as follows:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.enable = true;
}
```

The X server will automatically detect and use the appropriate video
driver from a set of X.org drivers (such as `vesa` and `intel`). You can
also specify a driver manually, e.g.

```nix
{
  services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "r128" ];
}
```

to enable X.org's `xf86-video-r128` driver.

You also need to enable at least one desktop or window manager.
Otherwise, you can only log into a plain undecorated `xterm` window.
Thus you should pick one or more of the following lines:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.xfce.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.mate.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.xmonad.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.twm.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.icewm.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.i3.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.herbstluftwm.enable = true;
}
```

NixOS's default *display manager* (the program that provides a graphical
login prompt and manages the X server) is LightDM. You can select an
alternative one by picking one of the following lines:

```nix
{
  services.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
  services.xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
}
```

You can set the keyboard layout (and optionally the layout variant):

```nix
{
  services.xserver.xkb.layout = "de";
  services.xserver.xkb.variant = "neo";
}
```

The X server is started automatically at boot time. If you don't want
this to happen, you can set:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.autorun = false;
}
```

The X server can then be started manually:

```ShellSession
# systemctl start display-manager.service
```

On 64-bit systems, if you want OpenGL for 32-bit programs such as in
Wine, you should also set the following:

```nix
{
  hardware.opengl.driSupport32Bit = true;
}
```

## Auto-login {#sec-x11-auto-login}

The x11 login screen can be skipped entirely, automatically logging you
into your window manager and desktop environment when you boot your
computer.

This is especially helpful if you have disk encryption enabled. Since
you already have to provide a password to decrypt your disk, entering a
second password to login can be redundant.

To enable auto-login, you need to define your default window manager and
desktop environment. If you wanted no desktop environment and i3 as your
your window manager, you'd define:

```nix
{
  services.displayManager.defaultSession = "none+i3";
}
```

Every display manager in NixOS supports auto-login, here is an example
using lightdm for a user `alice`:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.displayManager.lightdm.enable = true;
  services.displayManager.autoLogin.enable = true;
  services.displayManager.autoLogin.user = "alice";
}
```

## Intel Graphics drivers {#sec-x11--graphics-cards-intel}

There are two choices for Intel Graphics drivers in X.org: `modesetting`
(included in the xorg-server itself) and `intel` (provided by the
package xf86-video-intel).

The default and recommended is `modesetting`. It is a generic driver
which uses the kernel [mode
setting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_setting) (KMS) mechanism. It
supports Glamor (2D graphics acceleration via OpenGL) and is actively
maintained but may perform worse in some cases (like in old chipsets).

The second driver, `intel`, is specific to Intel GPUs, but not
recommended by most distributions: it lacks several modern features (for
example, it doesn't support Glamor) and the package hasn't been
officially updated since 2015.

The results vary depending on the hardware, so you may have to try both
drivers. Use the option
[](#opt-services.xserver.videoDrivers)
to set one. The recommended configuration for modern systems is:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "modesetting" ];
}
```

If you experience screen tearing no matter what, this configuration was
reported to resolve the issue:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "intel" ];
  services.xserver.deviceSection = ''
    Option "DRI" "2"
    Option "TearFree" "true"
  '';
}
```

Note that this will likely downgrade the performance compared to
`modesetting` or `intel` with DRI 3 (default).

## Proprietary NVIDIA drivers {#sec-x11-graphics-cards-nvidia}

NVIDIA provides a proprietary driver for its graphics cards that has
better 3D performance than the X.org drivers. It is not enabled by
default because it's not free software. You can enable it as follows:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "nvidia" ];
}
```

If you have an older card, you may have to use one of the legacy drivers:

```nix
{
  hardware.nvidia.package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.legacy_470;
  hardware.nvidia.package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.legacy_390;
  hardware.nvidia.package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.legacy_340;
}
```

You may need to reboot after enabling this driver to prevent a clash
with other kernel modules.

## Proprietary AMD drivers {#sec-x11--graphics-cards-amd}

AMD provides a proprietary driver for its graphics cards that is not
enabled by default because it's not Free Software, is often broken in
nixpkgs and as of this writing doesn't offer more features or
performance. If you still want to use it anyway, you need to explicitly
set:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "amdgpu-pro" ];
}
```

You will need to reboot after enabling this driver to prevent a clash
with other kernel modules.

## Touchpads {#sec-x11-touchpads}

Support for Synaptics touchpads (found in many laptops such as the Dell
Latitude series) can be enabled as follows:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;
}
```

The driver has many options (see [](#ch-options)).
For instance, the following disables tap-to-click behavior:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.libinput.touchpad.tapping = false;
}
```

Note: the use of `services.xserver.synaptics` is deprecated since NixOS
17.09.

## GTK/Qt themes {#sec-x11-gtk-and-qt-themes}

GTK themes can be installed either to user profile or system-wide (via
`environment.systemPackages`). To make Qt 5 applications look similar to
GTK ones, you can use the following configuration:

```nix
{
  qt.enable = true;
  qt.platformTheme = "gtk2";
  qt.style = "gtk2";
}
```

## Custom XKB layouts {#custom-xkb-layouts}

It is possible to install custom [ XKB
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_keyboard_extension) keyboard layouts
using the option `services.xserver.xkb.extraLayouts`.

As a first example, we are going to create a layout based on the basic
US layout, with an additional layer to type some greek symbols by
pressing the right-alt key.

Create a file called `us-greek` with the following content (under a
directory called `symbols`; it's an XKB peculiarity that will help with
testing):

```
xkb_symbols "us-greek"
{
  include "us(basic)"            // includes the base US keys
  include "level3(ralt_switch)"  // configures right alt as a third level switch

  key <LatA> { [ a, A, Greek_alpha ] };
  key <LatB> { [ b, B, Greek_beta  ] };
  key <LatG> { [ g, G, Greek_gamma ] };
  key <LatD> { [ d, D, Greek_delta ] };
  key <LatZ> { [ z, Z, Greek_zeta  ] };
};
```

A minimal layout specification must include the following:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.xkb.extraLayouts.us-greek = {
    description = "US layout with alt-gr greek";
    languages   = [ "eng" ];
    symbolsFile = /yourpath/symbols/us-greek;
  };
}
```

::: {.note}
The name (after `extraLayouts.`) should match the one given to the
`xkb_symbols` block.
:::

Applying this customization requires rebuilding several packages, and a
broken XKB file can lead to the X session crashing at login. Therefore,
you're strongly advised to **test your layout before applying it**:

```ShellSession
$ nix-shell -p xorg.xkbcomp
$ setxkbmap -I/yourpath us-greek -print | xkbcomp -I/yourpath - $DISPLAY
```

You can inspect the predefined XKB files for examples:

```ShellSession
$ echo "$(nix-build --no-out-link '<nixpkgs>' -A xorg.xkeyboardconfig)/etc/X11/xkb/"
```

Once the configuration is applied, and you did a logout/login cycle, the
layout should be ready to use. You can try it by e.g. running
`setxkbmap us-greek` and then type `<alt>+a` (it may not get applied in
your terminal straight away). To change the default, the usual
`services.xserver.xkb.layout` option can still be used.

A layout can have several other components besides `xkb_symbols`, for
example we will define new keycodes for some multimedia key and bind
these to some symbol.

Use the *xev* utility from `pkgs.xorg.xev` to find the codes of the keys
of interest, then create a `media-key` file to hold the keycodes
definitions

```
xkb_keycodes "media"
{
 <volUp>   = 123;
 <volDown> = 456;
}
```

Now use the newly define keycodes in `media-sym`:

```
xkb_symbols "media"
{
 key.type = "ONE_LEVEL";
 key <volUp>   { [ XF86AudioLowerVolume ] };
 key <volDown> { [ XF86AudioRaiseVolume ] };
}
```

As before, to install the layout do

```nix
{
  services.xserver.xkb.extraLayouts.media = {
    description  = "Multimedia keys remapping";
    languages    = [ "eng" ];
    symbolsFile  = /path/to/media-key;
    keycodesFile = /path/to/media-sym;
  };
}
```

::: {.note}
The function `pkgs.writeText <filename> <content>` can be useful if you
prefer to keep the layout definitions inside the NixOS configuration.
:::

Unfortunately, the Xorg server does not (currently) support setting a
keymap directly but relies instead on XKB rules to select the matching
components (keycodes, types, ...) of a layout. This means that
components other than symbols won't be loaded by default. As a
workaround, you can set the keymap using `setxkbmap` at the start of the
session with:

```nix
{
  services.xserver.displayManager.sessionCommands = "setxkbmap -keycodes media";
}
```

If you are manually starting the X server, you should set the argument
`-xkbdir /etc/X11/xkb`, otherwise X won't find your layout files. For
example with `xinit` run

```ShellSession
$ xinit -- -xkbdir /etc/X11/xkb
```

To learn how to write layouts take a look at the XKB [documentation
](https://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/xorg-docs/input/XKB-Enhancing.html#Defining_New_Layouts).
More example layouts can also be found [here
](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_KeyBoard_extension#Basic_examples).
