What does gnome-pkgview do? --------------------------- gnome-pkgview does two things to help decide what version of GNOME you are running. Depending on who you ask there are two differing views on this: 1. There _is_ no specific GNOME version. pkgview displays the versions of desktop components installed via their pkg-config .pc files. It also gives the prefix (to determine between multiple versions) and a description. 2. Use gnome-version.xml, dammit! pkgview displays the desktop version and vendor string as per this file. You can even replace pixmaps/logo.png with your company's own expensive focus-group targetted corporate image! I've recently heard that Debian packages don't always include this file in gnome-desktop. Hassle your local Debian packager. Things gnome-pkgview doesn't do: -------------------------------- - deal with several installed GNOME versions very sensibly. Firstly, I don't have the resources or time to have more than 2.1.x (yay dogfood!). Secondly, this tool is really to enable end-users to report useful information to admins/gurus. Having extra complexity would just be bad. Hopefully, gnome-pkgview does the right thing with the details of the version its currently running under. - tell you what updates are available at ftp.gnome.org Nice idea. Also worrying feature creep. This isn't red-carpet. Maybe one day gnome-pkgview will advise people of recent updates to what they're running. Why the name change from pkgview? --------------------------------- Debian packager advice - name was too general. Also discovered an ancient RPM front-end called that.