Fedora - Change default apps

When you open a file with a file manager, the file manager needs to

• detect the filetype:

  • via the filename: by lookup the table
  • via the file signature: with map the file signature’s Magic Bytes¹ to ta MIME type

• choose the right application for that file.

Open file from CLI

In the CLI, to open a file, you:

• decide the application before the file; then invoke that specific application with the file path as an argument.
• only needs to decide which file to open; then let another application open that file in your preferred application.

Open terminal from Fedora Files (nautilus)

The default terminal is Fedora is gnome-terminal, for now you can’t change it.

• Flatpak’s Files - Extension: “Terminal plugin for Files”
• nautilus-open-any-terminal

XDG - freedesktop

XDG - Cross-Desktop Group - the brand of specifications² published by freedesktop.org for interoperability between desktops.

Some of the widely-used specifications:

• Desktop base directories (basedir): how desktops should locate files, such as config files or application data files.
• Desktop entries (.desktop): files describing information about an application such as the name, icon, and description

For more information, see

• XDG MIME Applications | Arch Wiki