Comment 1 for bug 399516

I do not know if this is the preferred method of remedy, however, I propose the following fix:

=> Create a '.desktop' file in '/usr/share/xsessions' [owned by root:root with permissions 644] whose 'Exec' entry is '/etc/X11/Xsession'. See attached example. This creates a gdm sessions menu entry that runs Xsession without any arguments. The default behavior of Xsession is to check for the user's ~/.xsession, and get sh to interpret it, thus accomplishing what we want. Of course, this should work with more than just gdm [in the case that other display managers similarly lack an equivalent option by default].