How to get the GNOME version?
GNOME 3
version is stored in this file:
/usr/share/gnome/gnome-version.xml
content (on my system):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gnome-version>
<platform>3</platform>
<minor>6</minor>
<micro>2</micro>
<distributor>Arch Linux</distributor>
<date>2012-11-13</date>
</gnome-version>
The file is part of the upstream package called gnome-desktop
(note that some distros split it into several packages so on your distro the file may end up in a package with a different name...)
GNOME
developers use this file to get the DE version number and display it in System Settings
(aka gnome-control-center
). So getting GNOME
version "the official way" means parsing the said file and extracting platform
, minor
and micro
values.
If you play with that file you can instantly see the results :)
In GNOME 2
the file in question is:
/usr/share/gnome-about/gnome-version.xml
(though this file might be missing on some older Gnome 2
versions IIRC)
And no, you shouldn't use commands like gnome-session --version
, gnome-shell --version
, gdm --version
etc. Those are GNOME desktop components, they are separate packages (with different code, history/changelog and maintainers) and as such their version may be different. They'll report the right GNOME
version only if they have the same version as gnome-desktop
(which is not always the case).
If you launch gnome-system-monitor
it shows the version in the dialog:
% gnome-system-monitor
My aging Fedora 14 box
Ubuntu 12.04
Try gnome-session --version
. There is a man page for it on my Debian (namely GNOME-SESSION(1)
) but the --version
option is not listed. Well, for me it says gnome-session 3.4.2.1
.
You can run it in the console
DISPLAY=":0" gnome-session --version
(possibly having to change the display).