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There's got to be some simple way I'm missing, but for the life of me I can't find it. How do I check my version of GNOME-Shell?

muru
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thimoteus
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  • allow me to add that in addition to needing to know the version of gnome-shell one is running, for those specific tasks & troubleshooting that require this information, one often also needs to know if they're running wayland or not (which does not depend on the version of gnome-shell, but rather needs to be checked separately) https://askubuntu.com/questions/904940/how-can-i-tell-if-i-am-running-wayland – michael Jul 21 '23 at 04:17

2 Answers2

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Just type

gnome-shell --version

into a terminal.

gentledevil
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    I tired it, but it didn't work. Got an error >> gnome-shell: error: no such option: --version – Vinay Nov 15 '10 at 11:25
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    @VinayChalluru: type gnome-shell -h. This should give you the available options and allow you to copy and paste --version to make sure you've got everything right (the hyphens can be especially tricky). – Waldir Leoncio Apr 14 '15 at 02:14
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The gnome-shell man page doesn't show --version as an option. Assuming you have installed it from the ubuntu repositories then you can look up the version in the repository. To just show the version:

apt-cache show gnome-shell | grep Version

On Ubuntu Maverick (10.10) I get

Version: 2.31.5-2ubuntu2

Note that this works whether or not the package is installed. You can also look up all packaged versions of gnome-shell on all ubuntu versions on http://packages.ubuntu.com/

Hamish Downer
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    The output could show several versions. – BuZZ-dEE Feb 02 '13 at 14:18
  • Yep: Version: 3.12.2-0ubuntu0~trusty2 Version: 3.10.4-0ubuntu5.2 Version: 3.10.4-0ubuntu5 – Tim Jul 23 '14 at 13:31
  • rather than apt-cache, a better tool for this specific task (querying the state of installed vs available packages) would be dpkg, e.g., use $ dpkg -l gnome-shell and verify the output is prefixed by ii or run: $ dpkg -l gnome-shell | grep '^ii' See also https://askubuntu.com/questions/1124914/distinction-between-apt-cache-and-dpkg-l – michael Jul 21 '23 at 04:10