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I have installed a Ubuntu 16.04LTS system, how can I know whether Gnome or KDE is installed ? (I searched a bit, but this is not at all intuitive).

Duchamp Gérard H. E.
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    `env | grep XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP`? – DK Bose Feb 12 '18 at 06:41
  • Sytem replies "XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Unity" which is not at all intuitive intuitive, sorry ... – Duchamp Gérard H. E. Feb 12 '18 at 06:43
  • No need to apologise :) Normally, people do a bit of a research *before* installing an OS. – DK Bose Feb 12 '18 at 06:46
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS comes with the Unity DEsktop. Kubuntu 16.04 LTS came with the KDE desktop. – guiverc Feb 12 '18 at 07:16
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    If you didn't understand the Unity answer; Unity is a Canonical DEsktop that is a drop-in-replacement for gnome with advantages & of course disadvantages; it isn't gnome but uses the same version of GTK+ /Glib so can use gnome apps without disadvantage (no wasted memory etc) – guiverc Feb 12 '18 at 07:23
  • @guiverc I installed "gnome-teak-tools", did "Top Bar>clock>show date" and ticked "show date", restarted and nothing happened. – Duchamp Gérard H. E. Feb 12 '18 at 07:53
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    Because you have the Unity DEsktop; `unity-tweak-tool` will be far more useful. I would expect gnome-tweak to appear if you enter it in the menu/launcher, or from command line, however I'd expect it to only let you change GTK+ settings (note: i don't know; I'm no gnome3/unity fan). You'll find the unity-tweak-tool far more useful for Ubuntu 16.04 (gnome-tweak-tool is more useful if you used Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04 and the gnome desktop). ps: You can install GNOME-desktop and choose (at login) to run either Unity or Gnome for the session on the same machine; logout when you want to switch etc. – guiverc Feb 12 '18 at 08:13
  • @guiverc It worked perfectly. Could you copy your last comment as an answer ? so that I could accept it. – Duchamp Gérard H. E. Feb 12 '18 at 08:21
  • @karel Well it seems a bit different. – Duchamp Gérard H. E. Feb 12 '18 at 13:50
  • [Stack Overflow is a paradise for egotistical askers of duplicate questions.]---> terrible welcome ! – Duchamp Gérard H. E. Feb 12 '18 at 14:29

1 Answers1

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(this follows on from comments. @DK Bose provided

env | grep XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

which confirmed 'Unity' as the DEsktop)

Unity is a Canonical DEsktop that is a drop-in-replacement for gnome with advantages & of course disadvantages; it isn't gnome but uses the same version of GTK+ /Glib so can use gnome apps without disadvantage (no wasted memory etc)

As to tweaking: instead of trying to use 'gnome-tweak-tools' I suggested adding the Unity Tweak Tool

sudo apt install unity-tweak-tool

as it provides far more options for Unity than gnome-tweak-tool.

guiverc
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