How to Change Default Terminal for Executing .desktop Files

bashcommand linedesktopvim

I've been trying to execute vim with alacritty as default. I have alacritty set as my default terminal emulator already, and in my vim.desktop I changed exec=vim %F with exec=alacritty -e vim %F. The problem is that when I open a file it first executes the command in gnome terminal and then launches vim in alacritty, the thing is that the gnome terminal stays open. I have also tried creating an script:

#!/bin/bash
alacritty -e vim & disown | exit

this does not work at all. I don't know what else to do and I cant find anything online. Thanks in advance!

Is it possible to change the default terminal that runs the Exec= command? so that just by writing Exec=vim %F would run it in alacritty

Best Answer

muru helped me clarify what was going on, thank you! The problem was that my .desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Vim
GenericName=Text Editor
Comment=Edit text files
Comment[es]=Edita archivos de texto
TryExec=vim
Exec=alacritty -e vim %F
Terminal=true
Type=Application
Keywords=Text;editor;
Icon=gvim
Categories=Utility;TextEditor;
StartupNotify=false
MimeType=text/english;text/plain;text/x-makefile;text/x-c++hdr;text/x-c++src;text/x-chdr;text/x-csrc;text/x-java;text/x-moc;text/x-pascal;text/x-tcl;text/x-tex;application/x-shellscript;text/x-c;text/x-c++;

Had the argument Terminal=true. What this does is that it executes the Exec= command in a terminal, opening a terminal to do so. If you set Terminal=false this will prevent any terminal from opening and it will just execute the command without opening the terminal.

Modern Answer

gtk-launch <app-name> - where <app-name> is the file name of the .desktop file, with or without the .desktop extension.

See another answer on this thread for more details. I got this info from that answer.

Deprecated shell tools answer

Written a long time ago - see the comments below this answer as to why this approach won't work for many desktop files.

The command that is run is contained inside the desktop file, preceded by Exec= so you could extract and run that by:

$(grep '^Exec' filename.desktop | tail -1 | sed 's/^Exec=//' | sed 's/%.//' \
| sed 's/^"//g' | sed 's/" *$//g') &

To break that down

grep  '^Exec' filename.desktop    # - finds the line which starts with Exec
| tail -1                         # - only use the last line, in case there are 
                                  #   multiple
| sed 's/^Exec=//'                # - removes the Exec from the start of the line
| sed 's/%.//'                    # - removes any arguments - %u, %f etc
| sed 's/^"//g' | sed 's/" *$//g' # - removes " around command (if present)
$(...)                            # - means run the result of the command run 
                                  #   here
&                                 # - at the end means run it in the background

You could put this in a file, say ~/bin/deskopen with the contents

#!/bin/sh
$(grep '^Exec' $1 | tail -1 | sed 's/^Exec=//' | sed 's/%.//' \
| sed 's/^"//g' | sed 's/" *$//g') &

Then make it executable

chmod +x ~/bin/deskopen

And then you could do, e.g.

deskopen /usr/share/applications/ubuntu-about.desktop

The arguments (%u, %F etc) are detailed here. None of them are relevant for launching at the command line.

Ubuntu – Checking if vim is installed successfully in Ubuntu 12.04

vim -- version

should do the job.
if vim is installed, it shows you the version of vim, else it asks you to install it.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Command Line – Running a .desktop File in Terminal

Modern Answer

Deprecated shell tools answer

Ubuntu – Checking if vim is installed successfully in Ubuntu 12.04

Related Question