Did you clicked at your Profile Picture? When the Line appears for the Password then You have the Gear Icon in the lower right Corner. Not before.
You can easily see it in the Gnome Settings. Go to Settings and there to the last Menu Point and ther You get an Oberview where You can see if You use X or Wayland:
X11 was originally developed as a display mechanism for point-of-sale devices (yes, cash registers). It's literally just a system for displaying blocks of pixels across a network. Even when displaying programs running locally, it's still using a network socket to talk to the X server. Before hardware graphic acceleration, X11 was clunky AF. With GPU acceleration, it's been tolerable. Wayland was built for the modern era. It's an actual GUI protocol, not just rectangular frame buffers overtop of one another.
Are there some growing pains with it? Surely, but I've had great luck with it and I would very much consider having to revert back to X11 a major downgrade.
-CR
Wayland was built over a decade ago with remarkably slow progress since.
Your argument comes across as if suggesting that since xserver was begun as a project many years ago for a specific purpose, it must therefor, be old and no good and not for a Modern Era.
In reality, however, the vast majority of the systems you rely on were begun decades ago and for a different purpose. From Microwave Communications to logging flight patterns, much of what we use today was adapted and improved from interesting beginnings.
The GTK you use and enjoy was created 25 years ago for image manipulation. A humble beginning that remains to this day: GIMP. It is the Gimp toolkit. And it is not the same toolkit that it once was. Years of development have added much to it.
What is remarkable about making this argument of age is that it clearly demonstrates being time tested and reliable. It is solid and stable. It is well maintained and universal. These are important facets to consider.
Wayland cuts out the server allowing direct communication for the protocol and kernel. In principle, this would be ideal. However, in practice, Wayland has consistently fallen short for over ten years without any sign of an alleviation to those growing pains.
Moreover, its very core functionality appears to be the very thing that limits it.
And greater responsiveness or speeds is often a difference in milliseconds or centiseconds, as already shown. A human won't notice a difference. Indeed, many of us have been using xserver for years and not been experiencing some clunky, sluggish slow system like you make it sound. Science and math do not support your claim.
In addition to this, if HW acceleration solved an issue (many users have HW Acceleration disabled without ill effects), then is that not the solving of a growing pain? It would imply that your argument in favor of Wayland would apply equally well to xserver.
Personally, I am a strong supporter of Wayland. However, I prefer to tug the facts out of our human biases and the facts are that Wayland has a long way to go, yet.
This is just the way it is and me wanting to believe that Wayland is ready does not make it so.
Nor can we be ethical if we were to force this personal want onto others either by defaulting to a currently not yet ready protocol nor by spinning the facts to make Wayland look more functional than it actually is.
I have to agree with Aravisian once more. What you are saying is all fine and well but at the end of the day X11 works where Wayland falls short.
Let me put it this way: X11 is like an electrician in a show; nobody thinks about him until the lights go out. It gets the job done effectively and quietly behind the scenes without nobody noticing nor having to think about it.
Wayland, on the other hand, is like your cousin's best friend from overseas who is supposed to be really cool but keeps poking his nose in everybody's faces and telling them how they are not doing it right.
EDIT: I was thinking of this scene from the movie "The Mummy", I think there's quite a resemblance 
terminal reports Wayland. if i loose features that i am trying to use zorin 17 then this is a broken distro.
can someone explain what i will loose going back to x11?
my laptop does not have nvidea graphics. it worked flawlessly with zorin 16.3.
Wow I touched a nerve here. Sorry about that.
Zorin seems to say their distro works great on legacy hardware and has some issues with nvidea and modern hardware.
However I see the issue as Zorin 17 has a number of flaws like the Ubuntu core it uses and the scramble for it to work on more modern hardware.
I installed this distro (16.3) on a Toughbook cf31 with 4gb ram and it works great. Based what I am hearing I should not upgrade my Toughbook to 17.
Thank you
This is something that all distros face: Balancing legacy hardware support against new hardware support.
A distributor wants to reach the widest audience possible, providing for their users across a broad range of hardware. The newest hardware may require keeping up to date on the latest kernels that provide the latest drivers. However, the latest kernels can include regressions or even bugs that affect legacy hardware.
The LTS base reaches into both areas, providing a lot of support for newer hardware while also maintaining the long term support for legacy hardware. However, due to that balancing act above, it cannot reach all the way into "new" in the manner that a rolling release does. Just as a rolling release is far more limited with legacy hardware support.
So, the user is responsible to choose their distro based on their needs.
GnuLinux distros are more akin to going to a tailor than they are a one-size-fits-all shop.
Nvidia works very well on Zorin OS. I am using Nvidia 3060 and have never had any trouble. Users that experience issues with Nvidia generally must address Nvidias Proprietary Drivers which are closed source and not open for ZorinGroup to modify or review. This is true across all GnuLinux distros.
I have a Toughbook, as well. When I bought it, I did a lot of distro-hopping to find a distro that would work on it and also would work well.
There is a thread on the old ZorinGroup forum that followed that progress. I finally settled on a distro that when installed, everything worked, the RAM and CPU usage was the best and it was quick: Zorin OS Lite.
What I can suggest is that you try distros using LiveUSB media. Explore and find out with your own eyes what fits and works best for you. Zorin OS 16.3 is still supported and if it is working great, it does not sound like there is a rush or a need to go "fixing" things. But if you want to experience some of the changes or features of Zorin OS 17, then it may be something you can test with a LiveUSB.
thank you
I was able to switch to X11 and it was a much worse experience and now I am back on wayland.
When I went into the conf file it showed that Wayland was off and I changed it to true. On next boot the Gear icon was present.
I think that Zorin 17 is not fully compatible with a 2018 Dell XPS 13 2 in 1 9635. While Zorin 16.3 was/is.
I think I will try Ubuntu 22.04.3 via live boot and then the version of Ubuntu Zorin 17 is based on which I think is the 20.0 version.
Is there a thread that lists the full, partial or no compatibility with Zorin 17?
I am considering returning to Mint or Ubuntu for regular desktop use and other distros via live boot.
I have had to delete my Zorin 16.3 install and cannot go back to it and since I switched to Zorin 17 I had to spend hours configuring it since there appears to be no fix available I will have to start from scratched again. I know the new features in Zorin 17 are cool and improve performance but this distro is exhibiting the same problems that Windows Users experienced after Windows XP SP3.
Zorin OS 17 is based on Ubuntu 22.04
Zorin OS 16 is based on Ubuntu 20.04.
I am not so sure that they do... you, yourself said:
Which is not a normal experience. And many other users have started thread or commented in existing threads that Zorin OS 17 shows less performance, seems sluggish and slow, etc., compared to Zorin OS 16.
For many years, I have praised that Zorin OS delivers the best performance among the distros that I try. This has been steady and consistent. Yet, 17 seems troubled...
I think that there is much to examine here.
And maybe much to learn from with 17.
I think the issue I ran into with Zorin 17 is related to the cfn file showing wayland false. Now that I have wayland true the touch screen works as expected and my screen does not dim.
Could the issue be that when I first installed Zorin 17 it decided on the wrong wayland setting?
If others run into this problem or a problem with Zorin 17 I think they need to look at the cfn file. It is true that when I checked with Terminal it said wayland was running but maybe it was not fully running.
Thank you for your help and advice.
If other folks are having issues with performance and they don't have the gear symbol when they first login I think folks should check to see if in the cfn file wayland=false and they should try to change it to wayland=true.
I have been on my Dell and zorin 17 is behaving nicely. I am at 42% battery with power settings on balanced mode and my screen does not dim anymore.
Thank you
SOLVED
I moved the marked solution to this post in order to draw attention to your suggestion.
Other users can look at
sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
Then restart the computer or restart GDM
sudo systemctl restart gdm3
Still no gear icon for me on 17 core despite doing the above and double checking with the Ubuntu article.
Yay I have wayland on my VM on Win 11 but not on my bare metal installation. Must be nvidia drivers.
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