Xdg was an acronym for the X Desktop Group, which is now known as freedesktop.org, but the label has remained. The freedesktop.org project has created a set of standards that now underlie X desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE and many others.
Questions for this tag should concentrate on configuration and aspects of the xdg standards and related xdg tools.
The freedesktop.org desktop standards are available at the official site, which also hosts related projects.
Included with Ubuntu is the xdg-utils package, which allows users to modify certain aspects of their desktop environment and integrate certain applications into it, whichever desktop they are running. As listed in the package description, these tools are included:
* xdg-desktop-menu - Install desktop menu items
* xdg-desktop-icon - Install icons on the user's desktop
* xdg-icon-resource - Install icon resources
* xdg-mime - Gather MIME information about a file
* xdg-open - Open a URL in the user's preferred application that
handles the respective URL or file type
* xdg-email - Open the user's preferred email client, potentially with
subject and other info filled in
* xdg-screensaver - Enable, disable, or suspend the screensaver
* xdg-settings - get various settings (default web browser) from
the desktop environment
The XDG Base Directory Specification can be found here.
