Cannot set new default browser in MATE

[mharrison]

Installed Chromium (eventually) and I am unable to set it as the default browser in MATE. Using the 14.1 release, just installed today. Tried to update-alternatives but that appears to be non-existent (sorry coming from Debian world so it may not be a slackware thing). Any help on setting this would be appreciated. Been searching Google for a while but the answers I've found all lead to a Debian based solution.

[gapan]

Have you tried setting the default browser through the "Preferred Applications" utility MATE provides? Is chromium not available in the list?

[mharrison]

I did try that and after uninstalling Firefox the dropdown is grayed out.

[gapan]

That because chromium doesn't advertise itself as a browser through mimetypes then. There should be a file /usr/share/applications/chromium.desktop, or similarly named. Open it and find the MimeType line. I'm copying the one from firefox here:

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MimeType=text/html;application/xhtml+xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/geo;image/svg+xml;

If there isn't one, add it, otherwise, add in missing elements, or remove the old one and paste this one. It should then appear in that menu.

[mharrison]

I changed the line with the one you pasted but it still doesn't appear in the preferred applications in Mate Control Center. Not a huge deal..not even sure I'm going to stick with Mate anyways...might switch over to KDE.

[gapan]

Strange. It should have worked. Try running:

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sudo /usr/bin/update-desktop-database /usr/share/applications

and check and if it still doesn't work try restarting MATE.