Ubuntu – What’s the difference between x-www-browser and gnome-www-browser

Chromium also has an option in its preferences to make it the default browser:

That should work, but it if doesn't, read on:

There are several keys in the GConf database that determine what browser is launched by xdg-open:

• /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/unknown/command
• /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
• /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/command
• /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/about/command

Make sure they are all set correctly:

• Hit Alt+F2
• Enter gconf-editor
• Navigate to the above keys, they should be set to /usr/bin/chromium-browser %s.

There are several ways to control what browser will open links, and a given application can also choose to prefer a different method, apart from the usual conventions.

If you are clicking on an html file from the desktop or from within Nautilus, you can control how the browser will open it by right-clicking on the HTML document and choosing properties.

From the command line, try sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser . This uses Debian's alternatives system. It will present you with a list of reasonable options from which you can choose to select.

To see what is available to the alternatives system, you will use the --list argument on the target component. For example:

% update-alternatives --list x-www-browser
    /usr/bin/chromium-browser
    /usr/bin/epiphany-browser
    /usr/bin/firefox
    /usr/bin/firefox-4.0
    /usr/bin/google-chrome
    /usr/bin/midori

This can be different from the Gnome 'Preferred Applications' setting. Another potential source of conflict exists if you have the BROWSER environment variable set. You can see if you have anything defined for it by typing env | grep BROWSER .

It appears that xdg-open and gnome-open don't follow the settings in the alternatives list. sensible-browser (which can be also launched via the command-line or from a script) does, but xdg-open and gnome-open should already be looking at the choice you made in 'Preferred Application.' (This should be the same GUI you get when running gnome-default-applications-properties.)