Bug 96441 - Detecting linux distribution and desktop environment
Summary: Detecting linux distribution and desktop environment
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.1.0.0.beta1
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsDevEval, topicQA
Depends on:
Blocks: About-Dialog
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2015-12-12 11:22 UTC by Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired)
Modified: 2020-09-21 08:05 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2015-12-12 11:22:48 UTC
It would be useful to include the linux distribution name and desktop environment in the about dialog and in the user agent string.

The simplest means of doing this would be to rely on already existing commandline tool, which is available on all distros - inxi. `inxi -S` would output something like the below, which could easily be parsed.

System:    Host: jay-MintX Kernel: 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.11.8 Distro: Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca
Comment 1 Michael Meeks 2015-12-12 12:17:07 UTC
Please be careful here ... this data is not just for the help about screen - but also will be reported back to TDF; so we need to be extra careful about adding stuff here.

Potentially we should add a parameter 'bool bRich = false' to that method and its uses so we can distinguish 'help->about' from the update script.

Fine to add things if you do that - and they're only there for the bRich setting =)
Comment 2 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2016-02-27 17:06:44 UTC
Yes if this data isnt useful for reporting to TDF, then it would be only needed in the about dialog, where it would be invaluable to QA, so when linux users copy and paste the about dialog info into bug reports, we wouldnt need to follow up with them on which distribution and desktop environment they are running (e.g. bug 81441, bug 98040).

I noticed that we do have Application::GetDesktopEnvironment() which does return some desktop environments like unity, kde3, kde4 and kde5, though i'm not sure how accurate this is.
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2020-09-21 08:05:20 UTC
There is no inxi by default on Arch Linux. 

"lsb_release -a" could return the distribution
LSB Version:    1.4
Distributor ID: Arch
Description:    Arch Linux
Release:        rolling
Codename:       n/a
(maybe "lsb_release -d -s")

$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP holds the desktop variable ("KDE" in my case); but now I can run my own theme... 

But the question is: Do we need this for QA. What do you think, Xisco?