stylix in home-manager standalone will not allow to start new gnome session

[f0rdprefect]

Tried in two different VMs:

debian 12.8.0
oraclelinux 9.3

enabled stylix in homemanager standalone as stated in the manual.

then

1. home-manager switch -b backup
2. logout
3. login

Screen just flickers and back to gdm login

flake.nix

{
  description = "Home Manager configuration";

  inputs = {
    # Specify the source of Home Manager and Nixpkgs.
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
    home-manager = {
      url = "github:nix-community/home-manager";
      inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    };
    stylix = {
      url = "github:danth/stylix";
    };
  };

  outputs = { nixpkgs, home-manager, stylix, ... }@inputs:
    let
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system};
    in {
      homeConfigurations."user" = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
        inherit pkgs;
        
        extraSpecialArgs = {
          inherit inputs;
          inherit system;
        };
        # Specify your home configuration modules here, for example,
        # the path to your home.nix.
        modules = [ 
           stylix.homeManagerModules.stylix
          ./home.nix 
        ];

        # Optionally use extraSpecialArgs
        # to pass through arguments to home.nix
      };
    };
}

home.nix

{ config, pkgs, nixvim-conf, system, inputs, stylix, ... }:

{
  # Home Manager needs a bit of information about you and the paths it should
  # manage.
  home.username = "user";
  home.homeDirectory = "/home/user";

  # This value determines the Home Manager release that your configuration is
  # compatible with. This helps avoid breakage when a new Home Manager release
  # introduces backwards incompatible changes.
  #
  # You should not change this value, even if you update Home Manager. If you do
  # want to update the value, then make sure to first check the Home Manager
  # release notes.
  home.stateVersion = "24.05"; # Please read the comment before changing.

  # The home.packages option allows you to install Nix packages into your
  # environment.
  stylix = {
    enable = true;
    polarity = "dark";
    base16Scheme = "${pkgs.base16-schemes}/share/themes/gruvbox-dark-hard.yaml";
    image = pkgs.fetchurl {
       url = "https://www.pixelstalk.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Epic-Anime-Awesome-Wallpapers.jpg";
       sha256 = "enQo3wqhgf0FEPHj2coOCvo7DuZv+x5rL/WIo4qPI50=";
    };

  };
  home.packages = [
     
    # # Adds the 'hello' command to your environment. It prints a friendly
    # # "Hello, world!" when run.
    # pkgs.hello

    # # It is sometimes useful to fine-tune packages, for example, by applying
    # # overrides. You can do that directly here, just don't forget the
    # # parentheses. Maybe you want to install Nerd Fonts with a limited number of
    # # fonts?
    # (pkgs.nerdfonts.override { fonts = [ "FantasqueSansMono" ]; })

    # # You can also create simple shell scripts directly inside your
    # # configuration. For example, this adds a command 'my-hello' to your
    # # environment:
    # (pkgs.writeShellScriptBin "my-hello" ''
    #   echo "Hello, ${config.home.username}!"
    # '')
  ];

  # Home Manager is pretty good at managing dotfiles. The primary way to manage
  # plain files is through 'home.file'.
  home.file = {
    # # Building this configuration will create a copy of 'dotfiles/screenrc' in
    # # the Nix store. Activating the configuration will then make '~/.screenrc' a
    # # symlink to the Nix store copy.
    # ".screenrc".source = dotfiles/screenrc;

    # # You can also set the file content immediately.
    # ".gradle/gradle.properties".text = ''
    #   org.gradle.console=verbose
    #   org.gradle.daemon.idletimeout=3600000
    # '';
  };

  # Home Manager can also manage your environment variables through
  # 'home.sessionVariables'. These will be explicitly sourced when using a
  # shell provided by Home Manager. If you don't want to manage your shell
  # through Home Manager then you have to manually source 'hm-session-vars.sh'
  # located at either
  #
  #  ~/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh
  #
  # or
  #
  #  ~/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh
  #
  # or
  #
  #  /etc/profiles/per-user/matt/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh
  #
  home.sessionVariables = {
     EDITOR = "nvim";
  };

  programs.nh = {
    enable = true;
  };
  programs.bash = {
    enable = true;
  };
  programs.zsh = {
    enable = false;

  };
  targets.genericLinux.enable = true;
  # Let Home Manager install and manage itself.
  programs.home-manager.enable = true;
}

if I change stylix.enable to false the gnome session login works again.

Any idea what is missing? Just activating the configuration is fine btw, no error messages and theming applied as far as I can see.

[trueNAHO]

Is commit ffba1f1 ("gnome: update to GNOME 47.2 (#658)") causing version mismatches with your installed GNOME version?

[f0rdprefect]

Quite likely it is a version mismatch between stylix and the non nixos version if gnome. I guess this is beyond the scope of stylix and home-manager. I have good results with arch and hyperland configuring themes, but it is safe to assume that the versions are just close enough. Feel free to close this issue if my assumption is correct.

[danth]

Screen just flickers and back to gdm login

The issue you describe happens very occasionally in my setup too (NixOS 24.11 + Home Manager standalone). I always assumed the cause was some other things I have in my configuration, but perhaps it's actually Stylix. Next time it happens I'll do some digging into the logs.