Help wanted from KDE, XFCE, and other DE/WM users

[pavinjoseph]

Hello everyone

I could really use your help in getting the display manager, graphical shell, and settings app binary name & version for your desktop environment and/or window manager for use in one of my programs.

Ideally, the output would look like this:

pavin@suse-pc:~> gdm --version || echo $?
GDM 46.2
pavin@suse-pc:~> gnome-shell --version || echo $?
GNOME Shell 46.5
pavin@suse-pc:~> gnome-control-center --version || echo $?
Local options gnome-control-center 46.4

If you need help finding your DE/WM:

pavin@suse-pc:~> echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP 
GNOME
pavin@suse-pc:~> echo $XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP 
gnome
pavin@suse-pc:~> echo $WINDOWMANAGER 
/usr/bin/gnome

If you need help finding the binaries related to the DE/WM:

ll /usr/bin | grep -i <your-de-name>

Thanks!

[tckosvic]

neofetch and fastfetch provide the info you are looking for, I believe. These are both installabe through zypper. They run from a terminal. Give a try.

tom kosvic

[pavinjoseph]

Thanks, this could be useful for users who need to figure out their DE/WM.
I have access to Gnome only at this time, hopefully someone with KDE, Xfce, or others can chime in with their outputs.

[hui]

It is easy to setup a VM and install all DE patterns to get the required input.

Btw all official available DEs and WMs including versions are known and can be seen in YaST Software (Scheme-> Graphical Environment). Or via zypper se.

[hui]

@hui

and can be seen in YaST Software (Scheme-> Graphical Environment)

Correction. It is Patterns->Graphical Environment

[penguinrapper]

penguin:~>  Hyprland --version || echo $?
Hyprland, built from branch  at commit  dirty ().
Date: 
Tag: , commits: 
built against aquamarine 0.4.1


penguin:~>  zypper info hyprland
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...


Information for package hyprland:
---------------------------------
Repository     : repo-oss
Name           : hyprland
Version        : 0.44.1-1.1
Arch           : x86_64
Vendor         : openSUSE
Installed Size : 7.8 MiB
Installed      : Yes
Status         : up-to-date
Source package : hyprland-0.44.1-1.1.src
Upstream URL   : https://hyprland.org/
Summary        : Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor
Description    : 
    Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor
    based on wlroots
    that doesn't sacrifice on its looks.

    It supports multiple layouts, fancy effects, has a
    very flexible IPC
    model allowing for a lot of customization, and
    more.

[marel]

I think inxi -S is enough:

> inxi -S
System:
  Host: localhost.localdomain Kernel: 6.11.3-2-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.2.1 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20241023

[pavinjoseph]

@penguinrapper Thanks, I’ve added Hyprland!

@hui @marel Unfortunately, I don’t need the version string itself but the command to get the version string. For example, the hyprland binary is called Hyprland with a capital H and I didn’t know that, I also could confirm from @penguinrapper 's response that the option to get version was indeed --version and not -V or -version or some other weirdness.

If you guys have a KDE or Xfce machine, I would really appreciate the info, not having to waste time setting up a new VM and install all the DEs myself!

[marel]

@pavinjoseph

I don’t need the version string itself but the command to get the version string

Okay, with standard installed command line tools:

> echo $XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP 
KDE
> plasmashell --version
plasmashell 6.2.1

[pavinjoseph]

Thanks!

Could you provide the version output of the display manager (I think it’s sddm on KDE) and the settings app, believe it’s called systemsettings6.

[marel]

Yes, running SDDM I know but how to find that…

Eventually I found in /usr/lib/X11/display-manager:

# DISPLAYMANAGER used to be set in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager, but the default is now set by update-alternatives
DISPLAYMANAGER=$(realpath --relative-base=/usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers /usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers/default-displaymanager)
DM=${DISPLAYMANAGER##*/}

So:

> realpath --relative-base=/usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers /usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers/default-displaymanager
sddm

That looks to be X11 specific though.

[pavinjoseph]

Google AI tells me it should be:

sddm version

Not sure if it’s correct though!

[pavinjoseph]

@marel Please don’t run the above command, I found an old KDE VM that I’m in the process of upgrading. Running even sddm --version would launch the greeter and may be even log you out of your session

@mods Please close this thread

[marel]

Don’t worry I did already try several things like this and got even an additional greeter screen but found no way to get the SDDM version apart from the info zypper has for sddm-qt6 or using:

man sddm | tail -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 2

source

[mrmazda]

# inxi -S
System:
  Host: ab560 Kernel: 6.4.0-150600.23.25-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.11 Distro: openSUSE Leap 15.6
# echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
KDE
# echo $XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP

# echo $WINDOWMANAGER
/usr/bin/startplasma-x11
# plasmashell --version
plasmashell 5.27.11
# inxi -Saz
System:
  Kernel: 6.4.0-150600.23.25-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 7.5.0 clocksource: tsc avail: hpet,acpi_pm
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz root=LABEL=tm8p16s156 noresume
    ipv6.disable=1 net.ifnames=0 consoleblank=0 preempt=full mitigations=off
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.11 tk: Qt v: 5.15.12 info: frameworks
    v: 5.115.0 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 7 dm: 1: KDM 2: XDM Distro: openSUSE Leap 15.6
#

# inxi -S
System:
  Host: ab250 Kernel: 6.4.0-150600.23.25-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: TDE (Trinity) v: R14.1.3 Distro: openSUSE Leap 15.6
# echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
Trinity
# echo $XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP
tde
# echo $WINDOWMANAGER
/opt/trinity/bin/starttde
# kshell --version
[tdeinit wrapper] Could not launch '--version'.
# inxi -Saz --vs
inxi 3.3.36-00 (2024-09-04)
System:
  Kernel: 6.4.0-150600.23.25-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 7.5.0 clocksource: tsc avail: hpet,acpi_pm
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz root=LABEL=pt3p20s156 noresume
    ipv6.disable=1 net.ifnames=0 consoleblank=0 i915.enable_guc=2
    preempt=full mitigations=off
  Desktop: TDE (Trinity) v: R14.1.3 tk: Qt v: 3.5.0 wm: Twin v: 3.0
    with: kicker vt: 7 dm: 1: TDM 2: XDM Distro: openSUSE Leap 15.6
#

[pavinjoseph]

@marel @mrmazda Thanks, I tested both KDE and Xfce and there was no way to get those to print their versions without having the user’s environment variables, so it’s a no-go for now