Howto change default system browser for all users?

ZiaTioN · Post by **ZiaTioN** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 1:50 am

I am looking for a way to change the default system browser from Mozilla 1.4 to firefox 1.0PR for all users on the system. Is this designated in a file somewhere? I also need all new suers that are added to have this browser as default.

agent007 · Post by **agent007** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:51 pm

hi,

You mean, when a shortcut is clicked, firefox is run right? I was in a similar situation sometime back and wanted the default browser to be Galeon. So what I did was, rename the mozilla binary to .bak and use the original name as a simlink to galeon. This should work for you too...

hope this helps...

X11 · Post by **X11** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 2:25 am

Ive just changed the links

this is a great idea.

ZiaTioN · Post by **ZiaTioN** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:27 pm

decent idea.

I was looking for something that was more of a feature instead of a work-around but it appears their is no feature that supports this so a work-around is all we have.

Thanks for the info!

insomnia · Post by **insomnia** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:21 pm

GNOME 2.8(default on FC3) does seem to have such a feature...

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:05 pm

Well, there is a "Preferred Applications" utility even in FC2 and before where you can select a default browser, but that is per user. This is gconf setting (see "/desktop/gnome/applications/browser" in the gconf-editor gui). I think you can manipulate these settings from a gconf command line like to see the value you could:

$ gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec

and to set a new value you could:

$ gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec "firefox"

You could execute this somewhere in one of the system logon scripts if you wanted to force this on all your users. Do a "man gconftool-2" for more information. Friggin' Miguel is trying to turn GNOME into Windows it seems. Why can't we just stick with good old simple config files. KDE still does it right (even though I do use GNOME at the moment).

agent007 · Post by **agent007** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:36 pm

This is one of the reasons I'm using WindowMaker....KDE is really slow on my system...

Void Main wrote: Friggin' Miguel is trying to turn GNOME into Windows it seems. Why can't we just stick with good old simple config files. KDE still does it right (even though I do use GNOME at the moment).

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:50 pm

I have two 21" monitors side by side at work. One running FC2 w/GNOME and the other a Sunray running Enlightenment. We have KDE set to be the default on the Sun server but it's too clunky for me. Enlightenment is much more minimalist which is what I prefer.

agent007 · Post by **agent007** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:08 am

I've noticed that apps take a longer time to load when using a minimalistic desktop environment. eg: Window Maker is very fast and light weight, but running an app takes a significantly longer time than it would in KDE or Gnome. Guess this is due to the fact that most of the libraries are shared with the desktop and applications dont have to load them in KDE since KDE would have already loaded it all in the memory after logging in...OTOH, A minimal desktop doesnt have the extra stuff, so its upto the apps to call the libs...

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:14 am

agent007 wrote:I've noticed that apps take a longer time to load when using a minimalistic desktop environment. eg: Window Maker is very fast and light weight, but running an app takes a significantly longer time than it would in KDE or Gnome. Guess this is due to the fact that most of the libraries are shared with the desktop and applications dont have to load them in KDE since KDE would have already loaded it all in the memory after logging in...OTOH, A minimal desktop doesnt have the extra stuff, so its upto the apps to call the libs...

That could very well be true if you are loading GNOME or KDE apps in your minimalist window manager. I don't use GNOME or KDE apps on the machine I use Enlightenment on (I use Eterm, Netview, Firefox, etc) and they load very fast. If all of the apps I used were KDE apps I would use KDE as my DE, if I were using GNOME apps I would use GNOME.

agent007 · Post by **agent007** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:02 pm

Thats a good suggestion Void. I should have thought about it earlier...

thanks..

Void Main wrote:
agent007 wrote: If all of the apps I used were KDE apps I would use KDE as my DE, if I were using GNOME apps I would use GNOME.