Desktop file format

Confused about all the .desktop files in Gnome / KDE? There is an official spec at: www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec.

Where are they?

All User files are in /usr/share/applications
Personal files are in $HOME/.local/share/applications

Gnome additions: / Autostart

 
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

should be set for files in $HOME/.config/autostart. This describes autostart applications. More info on autostart: KDE Bug #170817.

Find mime-type for a file

Here is how to determine the mime-type for a given file on the command line.

OS X

file --mime '''filename''

Linux

xdg-mime query filetype '''filename'''
gvfs-info -a standard::content-type '''filename''' | grep content | cut -d: -f4 | cut -d\  -f2-
gnomevfs-info '''filename''' | grep MIME | cut -d\: -f2- | cut -d\  -f2-
file --mime '''filename''' | cut -d\: -f2- | cut -d\  -f2

Everywhere

Update: We can modify the conditional alias to support mime types as well:

conditional_alias2 () {
  UNSET=false
  alias $1 > /dev/null 2>&1 || UNSET=true
  [ $UNSET = true ] && which $2 > /dev/null 2>&1 && alias $1=$3
}

mime_gvfs() {
  gvfs-info -a standard::content-type $1 | grep content | cut -d: -f4 | cut -d\  -f2-
}
mime_xdg() {
 xdg-mime query filetype $1
}
mime_gnomevfs() {
 gnomevfs-info file://$PWD/$1 | grep MIME | cut -d\: -f2- | cut -d\  -f2-
}
conditional_alias2 mime gvfs-info mime_gvfs
conditional_alias2 mime xdg-mime mime_xdg
conditional_alias2 mime gnomevfs-info mime_gnomevfs

Command Line Open in UNIX

On OS X I can just "open" any file. On Windows, I can use "start". And on Linux? On modern installations, the "xdg-open" command works just fine. Unfortunately - this is not always the case. And I don't want to remember different commands for different machines. So here is the ultimate open alias setting for bash, for all systems that I use (it can be easily extended for other environments).

---

 
conditional_alias() {
  UNSET=false
  alias $1 > /dev/null 2>&1 || UNSET=true
  [ x$UNSET = xtrue ] && which $2 > /dev/null 2>&1 && alias $1=$2
}
 
conditional_alias open gvfs-open
conditional_alias open xdg-open
conditional_alias open gnome-open
conditional_alias open exo-open
uname | grep MINGW > /dev/null 2>&1 && alias open=start

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