I am using KDE on Fedora 21 x86_64. I recently switched my default browser from Firefox to Chromium, and this worked out very well…except for Thunderbird, which still insists on attempting to open links with Firefox.
To attempt to resolve this problem, I have:
-
Read the Mozilla wiki entry which explains how to set your default browser on various platforms. (Of course it is horribly out of date, so…) My results are below:
-
Checked the default browser in KDE System Settings. It is set to
chromium
and appears to work fine. Usingxdg-open http://www.google.com/
from the command line opens Google in Chromium. But Thunderbird opens links in Firefox. -
Set the
network.protocol-handler.app.*
settings within Thunderbird's about:config. Despite these being explicitly set to chromium, Thunderbird still opens links with Firefox. Even after setting these to/usr/bin/xdg-open
Thunderbird still opens Firefox, leading me to believe that these settings are actually being ignored. -
Checked the
mimeTypes.rdf
file. Its relevant entries were set to open Google Chrome; no reference to Firefox appeared anywhere within it. In addition, the referenced Thunderbird configuration entries fornetwork.protocol-handler.warn-external.*
were already set:
I have also tried:
-
Checked the
~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
file. It does not appear to reference Firefox in any way.[Added Associations] application/x-extension-eml=userapp-Thunderbird-93GZAX.desktop;mozilla-thunderbird.desktop; audio/mpeg=vlc.desktop; message/rfc822=userapp-Thunderbird-93GZAX.desktop;mozilla-thunderbird.desktop; text/html=chromium-browser.desktop; x-scheme-handler/mailto=userapp-Thunderbird-93GZAX.desktop;mozilla-thunderbird.desktop; [Default Applications] application/x-extension-eml=mozilla-thunderbird.desktop message/rfc822=mozilla-thunderbird.desktop text/html=chromium-browser.desktop x-scheme-handler/mailto=mozilla-thunderbird.desktop
I just might be losing my mind here. What have I missed?
Best Answer
I still haven't figured out why Thunderbird does what it does, (though jason C's comment seems likely) but I have managed to get it working.
I simply stopped Thunderbird, deleted the
mimeTypes.rdf
file from the profile directory, and restarted Thunderbird. Then it prompted me for the browser to use and I was able to change it to chromium successfully.Thunderbird then created a new
mimeTypes.rdf
file which references chromium.Now looking for a new mail client that isn't utterly absurd, but that's a post for another site...