Date: 2019jun3 OS: Linux Q. Linux: detect if a machine is desktop, laptop, other A.

hostnamectl status | grep Chassis

This will output something like

Chassis: desktop

The man page says the other possible vales are

Currently, the following chassis types are defined: "desktop", "laptop", "convertible", "server", "tablet", "handset", "watch", "embedded", as well as the special chassis types "vm" and "container" for virtualized systems that lack an immediate physical chassis.

If you want to use it in a script:

CH_LINE=$(hostnamectl status | grep Chassis) CH_ARRAY=($CH_LINE) CHASSIS=${CH_ARRAY[1]} echo chassis=$CHASSIS