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How do I change my desktop name from Ubuntu Desktop to XYZ's Desktop via the Unity panel?

Community
  • 1
tanmay.01
  • 403

5 Answers5

36

There's a much quicker way than doug's method, by abusing the gettext translation system. Assuming you are using an English locale:

#Make a temporary text file using vim/gedit/cat/whatever
cat > /tmp/foo.po
msgid "Ubuntu Desktop"
msgstr "A Badger With A Gun"
^D

cd /usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES
sudo msgfmt -o unity.mo /tmp/foo.po

Then, either log out and back in, or just execute:

unity --replace
Eliah Kagan
  • 119,640
Tim Booth
  • 361
13

You would likely need to build the unity or unity-2d source. Currently, in unity-5.12, it would be found in /plugins/unityshell/src/PanelMenuView.cpp, line 78:

 _desktop_name(_("Ubuntu Desktop"))

In unity-2d, unity-2d 5.12: /panel/applets/appname/appnameapplet.cpp, line 369:

d->m_label->setText(u2dTr("Ubuntu Desktop"));
Community
  • 1
doug
  • 17,212
2

It appeared that, The Text on top-left corner uses the value from the file /usr/lib/os-release file. So, We need to edit the value for NAME key on that file only.

  1. Open with nano 

    sudo nano /usr/lib/os-release

  2. Change the value of NAME from the first line. I changed it to L Buntu just for testing. The file's content after change

    NAME="L Buntu"
VERSION="16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS"
VERSION_ID="16.04"
HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
UBUNTU_CODENAME=xenial

  3. Logout and Login again to see the change.

    Here is a tiny screenshot after change.

    screenshot after change

Tested on 16.04.

Anwar
  • 77,855
1

This is a bit unusual and may be reverted if you update Unity, but this should be possible.

  1. Open GEdit (or any other text editor) and insert the following:

    msgid "Ubuntu Desktop"
msgstr "Mac OS X"

  2. Save the file wherever you'd like with the .po extension. I'll refer to it as ~/desktop.po.

  3. Open up the terminal and execute the following commands:

    cd /usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES
sudo msgfmt -o unity.mo ~/desktop.po

  4. Log out and log back in and the text should have changed.

This is taking advantage of the translation system in Ubuntu to make it consider the English translation of "Ubuntu Desktop" to be "Mac OS X".

Andrew Johnson
  • 626
0

To expand on what has been suggested above, and if you want to entirely remove the "Ubuntu Desktop" label, you can use:

msgid "Ubuntu Desktop"
msgstr " "

Where the whitespace is created, in gedit, for instance, by holding Ctrl+Shift keys and typing U00A0, this will generate an ascii non breaking space.

source

adrien
  • 121