Application associations

Lord Illidan · 2008-10-20 22:41:41

I am a GNOME user, however I do admit to loading up XFCE and KDE sometimes, to see if the grass is greener on the other side. Usually, I could do this without anything changing on the GNOME side, but nowadays I'm finding that when I installed KDE, some of my file associations went to the KDE defaults - folders started opening in Dolphin when selected from the Places menu. I tried a few fixes suggested here, but the problem came back.

So I removed KDE, now I just installed XFCE. Immediately after installation I tried opening a folder from the Places menu - it opened in Thunar. I got Nautilus from the terminal and inspected some other files - they also had their associative application changed (.tar applications were set to file-roller, got changed to Squeeze).

Why is this happening? Ideally, file associations should be associated with the DE being used at the moment, not global for every DE.

ssjlegendx · 2008-10-22 01:00:49

On Arch (though perhaps not for all distributions), these defaults are (at least sometimes) taken from /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache. (See this post for more details.)

As you have witnessed, certain applications seem to "take over" the defaults when they are installed. (For me, the GIMP always replaces Eye of GNOME as the default image "handler.") I'm not certain what determines which program takes precedence....

Last edited by ssjlegendx (2008-10-22 01:02:34)

Lord Illidan · 2008-10-22 21:20:11

Yes, I knew about that file, wasn't aware of update-desktop-database command, though.

My point is that newly installed programs shouldn't displace older programs...

Slurp · 2008-10-23 11:02:20

Take a look at this and this.

Last edited by Slurp (2008-10-23 11:04:38)

Lord Illidan · 2008-10-24 22:06:05

Slurp wrote:

Take a look at this and this.

Thanks, using the defaults.list method in the 2nd link seems to have quieted down the issue on my pc. However, I wish this wasn't neccessary

Slurp · 2008-10-25 09:59:51

Yes, i hope they implement an easier way but until then...

iosonofabio · 2008-11-09 22:54:12

I used the same thing to quiet down GIMP, which was trying to govern my laptop... I chose evince as pdf-viewer, i.e.:

application/pdf=evince.desktop
application/postscript=evince.desktop

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-20 22:41:41

Application associations

#2 2008-10-22 01:00:49

Re: Application associations

#3 2008-10-22 21:20:11

Re: Application associations

#4 2008-10-23 11:02:20

Re: Application associations

#5 2008-10-24 22:06:05

Re: Application associations

#6 2008-10-25 09:59:51

Re: Application associations

#7 2008-11-09 22:54:12

Re: Application associations

Board footer