Change value of ${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP} from 'X-Cinnamon' into 'Cinnamon'

[od4knb]

Dear Linux Mint team,

Problem

Booted from linuxmint-22.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso, the value of '${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP}' is 'X-Cinnamon' instead of 'Cinnamon'.

When turning to the Wayland windowing system, the 'X' prefix (X11) is no longer valid.

Request

Please, change the value of '${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP}' from X-Cinnamon into Cinnamon (Case sensitive), which is the (official?) freedesktop.org value.

Investigation

On archlinux.org I read:

"Cinnamon was registered later than the rest of the desktop environments. As a result, some software may still be expecting its pre-registration value 'X-CINNAMON' (@od4knb: not 'X-Cinnamon'), such as Qt6":

QStringList QGenericUnixTheme::themeNames()
{
    QStringList result;
    if (QGuiApplication::desktopSettingsAware()) {
        const QByteArray desktopEnvironment = QGuiApplicationPrivate::platformIntegration()->services()->desktopEnvironment();
        QList<QByteArray> gtkBasedEnvironments;
        gtkBasedEnvironments << "GNOME"
                             << "X-CINNAMON"

On Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.3 I find the following values:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="X-Cinnamon"
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP="cinnamon"
DESKTOP_SESSION="cinnamon"

On debian-live-13.7.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso I find the following values:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="X-Cinnamon"
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP="lightde-xsession"
DESKTOP_SESSION="lightde-xsession"

On ubuntucinnamon-26.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso I find the following values:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="X-Cinnamon"
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP="cinnamon"
DESKTOP_SESSION="cinnamon"

System

System:
  Host: mint Kernel: 6.14.0-37-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc avail: hpet,acpi_pm
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper
    initrd=/casper/initrd.lz uuid=6e72f523-dc09-4880-8910-93ffa64401c5
    username=mint hostname=mint quiet splash --
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.6.4 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.6.1 tools:
    avail: cinnamon-screensaver vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0
    Distro: Linux Mint 22.3 Zena base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble

As there's no mint23.1-beta repo, I posted this on the 'cinnamon' repo.

Thanks for your attention,
Kind regards, Odie

[leigh123linux]

Extension. X- marks a non-registered, vendor-defined name. It's the same convention as X- headers in email/HTTP and x- MIME types, where it originally meant experimental/non-standard.

In the Desktop Entry spec, anything not in the registered list must carry the X- prefix, which is why X-Cinnamon validates while an unprefixed Cinnamon wouldn't. If a name gets registered, the prefix is dropped (e.g. GNOME, KDE, MATE).