Default applications

[Steve Cayford]

Erik Harrison wrote:
> [...]
> Xubuntu sets XDG_DATA_DIRS, and then places it's system wide configs
> appropriately. Since XDG_DATA_DIRS isn't set, Thunar looks for the
> files in the standard XDG locations, where there are no defaults. This
> is as per the XDG spec.
> 
> What Thunar's behavior is at this point, I'm not sure, but my guess is
> it casts about for the first .desktop file is can find that supports
> the MIME type. That's why Emacs opens up
> 
>> gedit.desktop points to gedit, but gedit is not installed on here. So I
>> suppose I should edit /usr/share/applications/defaults.list? Can I just
>> symlink that to /etc/xdg/xubuntu/applications/defaults.list?
>>
> 
> Yes, but you shouldn't. That only fixes Thunar - all the other Xubuntu
> customized packages that use XDG won't be able to find their
> systemwide defaults.
> 
> I'm not sure where Xubuntu sets XDG* but you said this was an LTSP
> customized setup? You've probably changed how the X login process
> works, replacing the chunk of xinit that sets the vars to what Xubuntu
> expects.
> 
> On my Xubuntu system XDG_DATA_DIRS is set to:
> /etc/xdg/xubuntu:/usr/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share
> 
> Set up the environment to match that at login and you should be golden.
> 
> [...]

Thank you, this is very helpful. As you suggest, I probably stepped on
something when configuring the login. Do you have any other XDG_ variables set
or is it just XDG_DATA_DIRS?

-Steve