I'm confused by the entry to start gdm in your .xsession.
A suggestion is to simplify your .xsession to read the same .your .xinitrc.
Also you do not need to be root to write/edit your .xinitrc/.xsession file
Quote:
$ mv ~/.xsession ~/.xsession_bu
$ ln -s ~/.xinitrc ~/.xession
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The gnome display manager should then have an option to select the gnome desktop which you can make permanent.
Congratulations on getting this far. NetBSD has been more challenging as of late to install a desktop compared to OpenBSD or FreeBSD.