flatpaks for default applications

[siamhie]

I have been using it since its inception: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.6.1/

These days I use LibreWolf but I started with Netscape Navigator Gold.
God I miss that browser's loading animation. (https://youtu.be/2twQYYWTuxA?si=piBaglk9Yu7DlGTm&t=57)

[dreamer]

Almost finished setting up the latest MXLinux on a z2g4 hp desktop.

The FAQ/Documentation needs a bit of help with respect to flatpaks as default applications.
To set Vivaldi as default browser (nobody actually uses Firefox except to download other browsers) the following works.

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flatpak run com.vivaldi.Vivaldi --new-tab "%s"

When reading email in Betterbird one can click a link and it launches properly.

mailto is a different story. Web searches show it to be expert friendly

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flatpak run eu.betterbird.Betterbird -compose -to=%1 -subject=%2 "%s"

that will cause bb to open a write window, but I cannot for the life of me find what variables to use for -to= and -subject=

Somebody set this up for Thunderbird, so they should know. I'm sure it will seem horribly obvious once someone responds to this post.

Suggestion for MXLinux: Since you support flatpaks with gui tools, why not support them in Default Applications. They should just appear in the list like the native apps and all the magic "just happens" like it does for the native apps.

Looking in my LXQt environment there is a file association called "x-scheme-handler/mailto". In XFCE I can't find it. It's strange because both desktop environments are installed alongside each other on the same MX-23 installation. Another example is mp3. The file association works in XFCE, but is nowhere to be found in the file associations GUI. I always considered Default Applications in XFCE subpar to basically any other desktop environment that I have tried. I'm saying this as someone who likes XFCE.

[b3ta]

Looks like the "mail client" part of post #14 was swallowed up by the following one.

<I digress>

According to statistics, the market share of web browsers used by 2025 is:

Chrome 63.68%, Safari 22.07%, Edge 5.71%, Samsung Internet 3.36%, Firefox 2.1%, and Others 3.08%.

Source: https://www.similarweb.com/es/browsers/

Given these data, the free and open-source web browser par excellence, Firefox, is used by just over 179 million people.

Sadly for this Firefox user, the 179 million is way to big if the 2.1% is correct, because:

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$ printf "%'0.0f\n" $(echo "scale=3;179/0.021*10^6" | bc)
8,523,809,000

A less involved way is to multiply 179 by 50 and then append 6 zeroes (bringing back the million we dropped to give us 179) to get an idea of the magnitude of the more finely calculated number.

That means more than every human (by current estimates) has a browser.

</I digress>

[FullScale4Me]

+1 b3ta

I think that data may include Windows users. To this thread's discussion, a narrowing of the survey group to be only Linux users would likely make FF not seem so smallish.

I had a high school Statistics instructor who had a phrase he often repeated - "First decide what you want to prove, and then select a dataset that most closely aligns with it." No sure is if was borrowed or not, this was in the pre Internet era.

[Stevo]

That means more than every human (by current estimates) has a browser.

I have multiple browsers on my desktop, phone, and tablet, so I account for a lot of those browsers.

[seasoned_geek]

On behalf of all nobodies, as a generalization, all generalizations (including this one) are often both unbased and wrong.

P.S. I too come from a background of RSTS at DEC, recalled happily.

Iregardless of the aforementioned conclusion (an old PDP-er should recognize that); the reason there are generalizations is the fact mass quantities of the known universe fit within them.

Second: your latest post assumes the proportions of a polemic. Difficult to digest in it's entirety. Please do try to make your point more succinctly.

Impossible for an author, or at least a successful one.

One ring to rule them all

doesn't have much meaning until you've been through the entire Middle Earth trilogy.

[seasoned_geek]

nobody actually uses Firefox

According to statistics, the market share of web browsers used by 2025 is:

Chrome 63.68%, Safari 22.07%, Edge 5.71%, Samsung Internet 3.36%, Firefox 2.1%, and Others 3.08%.

Source: https://www.similarweb.com/es/browsers/

Given these data, the free and open-source web browser par excellence, Firefox, is used by just over 179 million people.

2.1% would just be a rounding error in most statistical studies.

Here is a tiny bit of information to season the statistics. The vast majority of browsers counted as Chrome are really Vivaldi, Brave, etc. which use the Chrome libraries after they remove all of Google's privacy invading surveillance routines. They report as Chrome to web sites so the site knows what functionality to expect. I suspect, but have not looked into the code, That LibreWolf and the token few other browsers using using the lizard (do they still use a lizard as the mascot?) code base report as Firefox for the same reason.

[seasoned_geek]

Looking in my LXQt environment there is a file association called "x-scheme-handler/mailto". In XFCE I can't find it. It's strange because both desktop environments are installed alongside each other on the same MX-23 installation. Another example is mp3. The file association works in XFCE, but is nowhere to be found in the file associations GUI. I always considered Default Applications in XFCE subpar to basically any other desktop environment that I have tried. I'm saying this as someone who likes XFCE.

Thank you for your efforts. I went over to my Manjaro machine (gasp!) because it is basically a raw install and found this

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/usr/share/xfce4/helpers/thunderbird.desktop

at the bottom of the file one finds

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Name=Mozilla Thunderbird
StartupNotify=false
X-XFCE-Binaries=thunderbird;thunderbird-gtk2;thunderbird-gtk;mozilla-thunderbird;org.mozilla.Thunderbird;
X-XFCE-Category=MailReader
X-XFCE-Commands=%B;
X-XFCE-CommandsWithParameter=/usr/lib/xfce4/xfce4-compose-mail mozilla-remote %B "mailto:%s";/usr/lib/xfce4/xfce4-compose-mail mozilla %B "mailto:%s";

When I get back to office and start working on this I will thieve this to create a betterbird.desktop in /usr/share/xfce4/helpers. If the forum wishes, once I get it working I can post the final results in this thread, perhaps write a tutorial?

[Nokkaelaein]

The vast majority of browsers counted as Chrome are really Vivaldi, Brave, etc.

Citing some reputable sources for a claim like this would be neat. I understand this is just a thread for flatpak application default usage xD, yet even in such throwaway contexts, where an assertion like that (among other things) is off topic and might seem like an easy side remark to include, actually showing where it is from and where it can be fact checked would be more credible. For some of the other things brought up here, there was at least links to things like someone's writings under a description "this enjoyable post", which was relatively quick to check out and note they were commenting on topics they didn't have good grasp on. But: the vast majority of browsers counted as Chrome aren't actually Chrome itself. Where is this coming from, and how to verify?

[siamhie]

When I get back to office and start working on this I will thieve this to create a betterbird.desktop in /usr/share/xfce4/helpers. If the forum wishes, once I get it working I can post the final results in this thread, perhaps write a tutorial?

@seasoned_geek When you get it all sorted out and working, create a new topic in the Tips & Tricks by users (not for help) sub
so that others can benefit from it down the road. viewforum.php?f=23