GNOME

How to display login dialog from VT?

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/15xd5r5/comment/jx5jpvg/

systemctl restart display-manager

How to open Nautilus with current directory?

explorer.exe . => xdg-open .

ref: https://askubuntu.com/questions/226755/how-to-open-nautilus-at-current-command-line-directory

How to persist the config?

Basically it should be done by gsettings set. And you can get the key and value by dconf watch / while changing in UI.
However some options don't appear in dconf. I don't know the entire list. At least battery related options are the one.

This can be shown in powerprofilesctl

> powerprofilesctl
  performance:
    CpuDriver:  amd_pstate
    PlatformDriver:     platform_profile
    Degraded:   no

* balanced:
    CpuDriver:  amd_pstate
    PlatformDriver:     platform_profile

  power-saver:
    CpuDriver:  amd_pstate

How to determine the icon lookup?

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/icon-theme-spec/latest/#icon_lookup