solution to a seemingly uncommon problem - frozen login

I have been struggling to login to my fresh install for quite a while now..

I chose to post to r/linux because I have seen this issue mentioned online by users of mint, ubuntu, fedora, bazzite, and manjaro since theyre all linux disteos and none of the solutions i found worked. I hope to spare the next person the suffering I endured..

I have an HP Gaming Desktop with a AMD RTX580 GPU. I am using an HDMI cable plugged into a TV.

I am pretty familiar with linux (via ubuntu/fedora) and have encountered the same strange issue in ubuntu and bazzite right after an install (that could only be done with safe graphics)

I have seen a handful of people having this issue and no solution (that worked for me) is documented

Both ubuntu 24.04 and bazzite 44 booted to the login screen with nothing to click and a mouse cursor and clock frozen in the bottom right corner. ctl+alt+f1 didnt work nor did ctl+alt+del alt+tab. neither mouse or keyboard input produced anything

For a while I could only get bazzite 44 ostree 1 to work well enough to login and use.

a few times it did give a user to click but the mouse still did not move.

I tried several solutions to no avail:

editing with 'e' on grub menu

\- nomodeset

\- amdgpu.dc=0

\- amdgpu.aspm=0

i was not able to successfully able to log into my fresh install until I added "nomodeset systemd.unit=multi-user.target" and hit f10 to boot.

I was able to log in and reach the terminal. from there I ran a few more commands*:

\- lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|Display'

\- sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'amdgpu|radeon|firmware'

*these can be edited to troubleshoot your system

From these I got an error code -22, no clue what that meant but it was somehow that confirmed that the gui was the problem.

I solved this by switching to X11 by creating a /etc/gdm/custom.conf with "WaylandEnable=false"

TLDR; if you get stuck at a frozen grey login screen, the clock is stopped and you cant move ur mouse. edit the grub menu option (with e) to boot into text mode and switch to x11/disable wayland

https://redd.it/1t9sz2a
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