It turns out the problem is related to user services. I just disabled my user services, rebooted, and GNOME session started. I only have one user service defined in ~/.config/shepherd/init.scm as follows ~~~ ;;; Definition of my user-level services. (use-modules (shepherd service)) ;;; SERVICE DEFINITIONS ;;; =================== (define rygel (make #:provides '(rygel) #:docstring "Run the Rygel media server." #:start (make-forkexec-constructor '("rygel")) #:stop (make-kill-destructor) #:respawn? #t)) ;;; REGISTER SERVICES ;;; ================= (register-services rygel) ;;; START SERVICES ;;; ============== (start rygel) ;;; Send shepherd to the background. (action 'shepherd 'daemonize) ~~~ And I call "shepherd" in the ~/.profile file. This never posed a problem until my recent system generations from April to date, though, where I was never able to start a GNOME session. So I wonder what's going on now... For what it's worth, the only error I see in ~/.config/shepherd/shepherd.log is this 2022-04-07 11:01:57 system-error("getpgid" "~A" ("No existe el proceso") (3)) "No existe el proceso" meaning, "The process doesn't exist". This error has occurred several times since 2021, though.