update-desktop-database command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

update-desktop-database: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: update-desktop-database: command not found

Solutions to update-desktop-database: command not found

How To Fix update-desktop-database: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu update-desktop-database is provided by desktop-file-utils package.

desktop-file-utils is:

Some utilities to make dealing with .desktop files easier:

• update-desktop-database – update the desktop-MIME mapping
• desktop-file-validate – validate a desktop file
• desktop-file-install – install a desktop file, munging en route.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install desktop-file-utils

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install desktop-file-utils.

sudo apt -y install desktop-file-utils

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install desktop-file-utils

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix update-desktop-database command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.