Is there a way to retrieve the name of the Desktop Environment?

Question

Is there a way to retrieve the desktop environment name (e.g. Gnome, Unity, XFCE, LXDE, KDE...) from the command line or using Python?

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 26 '16 at 13:47

9

In a Terminal input:

echo $DESKTOP_SESSION

if it does not help (it may be equal 'default'), try

echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

edited Dec 26 '16 at 13:47

PADYMKO

answered Aug 25 '12 at 13:46

6

Note that this will not always work as sometimes DESKTOP_SESSION is set to "Default" or in some cases not set at all (I think it's gdm/kdm that set this variable). A better approach would be to check for the running session process. – don_crissti Aug 25 '12 at 17:39
I noticed there's also a varable XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="LXDE" (or "Unity", in my two desktops), do you think it's reliable? – giuspen Aug 26 '12 at 08:58
1

@giuspen - discussed also here [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10235117/how-to-detect-if-linux-os-uses-kde-or-gnome-environment). XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is just a proposal, it's not part of the XDG spec and is discussed on various mailing lists, e.g. [link](http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg06587.html). FIY I am on Gnome3/Arch64bit, I have all the xdg-* packages installed and this variable is unset. – don_crissti Aug 26 '12 at 13:11
@don_crissti - thanks I read in the other discussion that you linked that XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is deprecated. I will try to look at the running processes. – giuspen Aug 26 '12 at 14:50
@giuspen: On Xubuntu 13.04, I get `xubuntu` for `$DESKTOP_SESSION` and `XFCE` for `$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP`. – Alix Axel May 30 '13 at 07:19

1 Answers1