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Atralb
Asked: 2020-01-15 11:46:53 +0800 CST

Why do some packages in Gnome/Ubuntu not have the same name in the file system than in their path? How to revert it?

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I'm taking the example of the so-called "Videos" packages while it is in fact called totem in usr/bin/totem.

But there are dozens of others, e.g. "Terminal" which is really called gnome-terminal, etc...

This is extremely misleading and, I'm sure, has made thousands of people lose hours because of this.

Where is this "name symbolic link" made, and is it possible to remove it ? If so, how ?

gnome default-programs

2 Answers

  1. This is done because:

    • Videos is much easier for users to remember, instead of /usr/bin/totem.
    • Terminal is much easier for users to remember, instead of /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.

    Videos and Terminal are closer to the actual functionality of those applications.

    Also, when searching for applications via the Super key, if you enter the search string "videos", you may actually come up with multiple hits, depending on what applications you have installed. You wouldn't normally search for "totem" (although that would work).

    Update #1:

    To see where the names actually get changed... we look at a partial snippet...

    Note: the "Name=", and "Exec=", and "Icon=" lines...

    cat /usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Totem.desktop

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=Videos
Comment=Play movies
# Translators: Search terms to find this application. Do NOT translate or locali
ze the semicolons! The list MUST also end with a semicolon! Do NOT translate or 
remove the application name from the list! It is used for search.
Keywords=Video;Movie;Film;Clip;Series;Player;DVD;TV;Disc;Totem;
Exec=totem %U
# Translators: Do NOT translate or transliterate this text (this is an icon file
 name)!
Icon=org.gnome.Totem
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  2. Ok, thanks for the help some provided in the comments.

    So I found 2 methods for knowing the actual command of a Gonme/Ubuntu app :

    1) As @pomsky indicated you can do that in GUI with Nautilus :

    • Open nautilus ("Files" in Gnome menu)
    • Navigate to /usr/share/applications
    • Right click on the app of your choice and select Properties
    • The actual terminal command is shown in the "Command" field

    2) More tricky, you will need to reverse find the name of the app in the list of all commands that are aliased.

    • Open a Terminal
    • grep -l Pattern /usr/share/applications will output any file that contains the Pattern, which needs to be the App you are searching for.
    • grep Exec File, where File is (one of) the file you got on last step.
    • You can now see the actual command run by the system when you launch an App in the menu !

    E.g : 

    $ grep -l Videos /usr/share/applications

org.gnome.Totem.desktop
totem.desktop

$ grep Exec totem.desktop

Exec=totem %U
Exec=totem --play-pause
Exec=totem --next
Exec=totem --previous
Exec=totem --mute
Exec=totem --fullscreen

    I can now see that the actual command launched by "Videos" is totem :).

    PS : Verified on Ubuntu 18.04

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