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[SOLVED] update-alternatives for default browser

PostPosted: May 11th, '22, 16:47
by epp
I may be uninstalling Firefox due to an issue with the USB mouse. The issue, is that when I am reading a web page in Firefox, the page would unexpectedly begin to randomly scroll, without touching the mouse wheel. On the surface, this would indicate a defective mouse, but for some reason, this does not occur at all when I'm using the same mouse with Chromium.

With past distros I've used, the command (as sudo): update-alternatives --config x-www-browser would display the installed browsers and offer an option to keep the default browser as is, or to choose another to be the default.

In Mageia, this same command produces no output. If Firefox were uninstalled, would the system automatically consider Chromium to be the default browser? As an example, if I clicked a link in an e-mail within Thunderbird, I would then want the link to open in Chromium, as opposed to nothing occurring.

Thanks in advance.

Re: update-alternatives

PostPosted: May 11th, '22, 19:26
by sturmvogel
Why don't you use
Application menu -> Preferences -> Lxqt settings-> File associations-> default Application-> browser

Re: update-alternatives

PostPosted: May 11th, '22, 19:50
by epp
That will do it. :)

(Haven't yet gone through all of the options.)

Thank you.

Re: update-alternatives

PostPosted: May 11th, '22, 19:58
by doktor5000
We don't have the alternatives mechanism for the browser. At least not like this. There's /usr/bin/www-browser which is supposed to call your configured default browser.
But depending on the application that actually tries to open a link, they all use different mechanisms to detect your default browser, so changing this in one place might not work for everything.

Have a look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Doktor5 ... me_handler on how to check and change the default browser.
Apart from that, AFAIR this happened for me (rarely) for long presses of the mousewheel in firefox.

Re: [SOLVED] update-alternatives for default browser

PostPosted: May 11th, '22, 20:13
by epp
I went into that LXQt preference and changed the default browser from Firefox to Chromium. I then closed Thunderbird and reopened it. I clicked a link in an email for this forum and it correctly opened in Chromium.

From your Wiki page: xdg-settings get default-web-browser displays Chromium as the default browser.

All set. :)

Thanks again.