Ubuntu – unity-control-center not working in i3wm on Ubuntu 16.04

16.04gnome-control-centeri3-wmunity

I am using i3wm desktop environment on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Everything was fine on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Now when I use unity-control-center I see only the following settings:

  1. Personal > Language Support
  2. Hardware > Printers
  3. System > Software & Updates

Where are the rest of the controls? I tried using the gnome-control-center. Still nothing better.

But if I use the Unity desktop environment everything works. I suppose, I need to run something before calling unity-control-center. What am I missing?

Please explain why this is happening.

Best Answer

For Gnome Ubuntu:

Set $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to GNOME and you're good to go:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center

For Unity Ubuntu:

Set $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to Unity and you're good to go:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Unity unity-control-center
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