Wayland is a newer protocol intended to replace X. Gnome has ported to Wayland and used it as default for some time. In recent versions of GDM login screen, there should be three options:
- GNOME
- GNOME Classic
- GNOME on Xorg
The first (default) option uses Wayland. But if it is missing, first check /etc/gdm/custom.conf, and make sure the following line is commented, or the value is set to true.
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#WaylandEnable=false
If the option is still missing after the config is set correctly, early KMS may be needed. Add GPU modules to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, for example, i915 for intel GPUs:
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MODULES=(... i915 ...)
Then regenerate the initramfs (for all installed kernels using -P option):
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mkinitcpio -P
And after a restart there should be the option for Wayland in GDM. When Gnome is running we can check our session type with:
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echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
References:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/kernel_mode_setting
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mkinitcpio