Default browser cannot be set via Chromium

[John Doe]

1) LM 11
2) Whenever I start Chromium I get ask to set Chromium as default browser. Saying yes to making it default browser doesn't work. The next time I open Chromium I'll get ask again. In LM 10 it worked flawlessly.
5) The problem happens every time I open Chromium.

More information can be found in this thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=73599

[John Doe (b2109455)]

Anyone?

[Vikki Roemer (compgrokker)]

FWIW, I've never been able to set the Chromium (or pure google-chrome) browser as the default in any of the distros I use. This seems to be an upstream bug with chromium/chrome, since it's affecting Arch as well as Mint/Peppermint. Not sure I can confirm though, since some users do seem to be able to set it to default?

[John Doe (b2109455)]

Hello Vikki,

I cannot reproduce your results. It worked for me with Linux Mint 10.

[Dick Distortion (dickdistortion)]

Just installed Linux Mint 11 x64, first thing I installed was Chromium and it also affects me.

[Pete Bevin (pete-petebevin)]

Workaround: touch ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list and restart Chromium.

It seems the browser tries to update the file, but fails if it didn't exist to begin with.

[Dane Mutters (dmutters)]

I know this is a somewhat old bug, but I'm affected by it when using Linux Mint 13 (AMD64). I am, however, trying to make Firefox default, rather than Chromium.

So, here's how I ran into it:
1) Install LinuxMint Mate edition.
2) Install other programs I like, such as WINE, Samba, etc., including adding the WINE repository from WineHQ.org.
3) Use the system for a month or two; sorry I can't be more specific on this point.
4) Install Chromium browser via synaptic. I didn't use a 3rd-party repository for this.
5) Set/install Chromium settings/extensions how I like them. I'm using Adblock Plus and Web of Trust, plus whatever media plugins web sites request.
6) In Firefox settings, tell it to check to see if it's the default browser on startup; disable this option in Chromium.
7) Note that FF never asks to set browser at startup.
8) Click on a link in a program--Pidgin, Virtualbox, whatever. It opens in Chromium.

Sadly, I can't say which of the above are involved in the problem, or that I know all the relevant details. Items 1, 4, 6, 7, and 8 are definitely involved, though.

I managed to work around this problem/bug with the following:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
(select the appropriate option)

One forum suggested that the symlink, /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser sometimes needs to be manually moved/deleted in order for the above workaround to function properly. This wasn't the case for me, but I thought I'd mention it, anyway.

Thanks for your interest in fixing this bug!

[Dane Mutters (dmutters)]

One more thing: "Preferred Applications" in the Control Panel won't set this properly. I selected FF there, and it did nothing.