Ubuntu – Why is Gedit set as default calendar app in Ubuntu

Evolution indeed is part of the GNOME Project. That's why it's Ubuntu's default mail client, I suppose.

Obviously, this makes it better integrated into the GNOME desktop, especially when running Ubuntu. Please not that some of the following features can be achieved with Thunderbird, too, but it does require some work and doesn't come like that out of the box.

1. Notifications: Evolution makes use of native notify-osd-notifications whereas thunderbird brings its own notifications and doesn't blend into the desktop as much as Evolution does
2. Messaging-Menu: Evolution is integrated into Ubuntu's Messaging Menue
3. GnuPG-Integration: While Enigmail is good and can be found in the repos, Evolution does come with GnuPG integration without having to install any additional packages

Additionally, some features like Exchange integration are present in Evolution, too. Those, too, could be added to Thunderbird via Extensions. For private desktop use, though, Evolution provides a more integrated experience.

I assume you mean you want to change the editor that Quickly loads when you ask it to.

Well I did some sleuthing... I'll show you what I did followed by the answer.

1. I fired off this command:

   sudo find / -name "*quickly*" -exec grep gedit {} \;
   

   That searches for all files with quickly in and then greps them for gedit. It was a long shot -- I should have refined the search so it was any paths with quickly in but it matched!

   Binary file /usr/share/quickly/templates/ubuntu-application/internal/quicklyutils.pyc matches
       editor = "gedit"
   

2. I opened up /usr/share/quickly/templates/ubuntu-application/internal/quicklyutils.py (not the compiled version) in nano, searched for gedit and saw:

   def get_quickly_editors():
       '''Return prefered editor for ubuntu-application template'''
   
       editor = "gedit"
       default_editor = os.environ.get("EDITOR")
       if not default_editor:
           default_editor = os.environ.get("SELECTED_EDITOR")
       if default_editor:
          editor = default_editor
       return editor
   

3. From that you can see it asks for the environment value EDITOR!

   Just run your quickly commands as:

   env EDITOR=gvim quickly edit
   

   or export it to persist

   export EDITOR=gvim
   quickly edit
   

   Add the export line to your ~/.bashrc line if you want it to persist between sessions.