No user-friendly way of changing the default applications in Ubuntu desktop

[Dražen Lučanin]

There is no quick and easy way to change default applications that open certain kinds of files (video, text, audio). There seems to be a lot of demand for this, judging by these AskUbuntu questions (and this is only for video files! More people are having trouble doing this for text editors, music players etc.):

http://askubuntu.com/questions/119244/cant-change-global-default-video-player-to-vlc
http://askubuntu.com/questions/91701/how-to-set-vlc-as-default-video-player

Currently e.g. if I want to switch from Totem to VLC for video playing, I either have to open properties and set VLC as the default manuall for *every* video file extension I encounter (.avi, .mp4, .mkv to name only a few - this is even worse for text files). The "default applications" options in the Control Center don't seem to do anything. The only feasible solution seems to be to open the administrative file /usr/share/applications/defaults.list and search for totem.desktop and replace all occurences with vlc.desktop - this is hackish to say the least, while also error-prone, and against the multi-user philosophy (since it applies the changes for all users).

Expected behaviour - since there are already two GUI places to specify default applications for certain file types at least one of them should work properly. Either the file properties should have two options - make default for this extension and make default for all files of this kind (e.g. video, audio, text etc.) or the default applications in the Control Center should work.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: ubuntu-desktop 1.287
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-25.39-generic 3.5.7.4
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-25-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Mar 15 22:59:31 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-10-19 (147 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: ubuntu-meta
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[londumas (helion331990)]

This bug is also on my machine (Ubuntu 13.04) and I can't set VLC for a .flv video. When I right-click on the video and go to property, the "set by default" button for VLC does nothing.
Thank for having repported this bug.

[Ralph Richardson (ralph-richardson)]

"Set as default" in "properties" does not work for me either!
Has not worked for a very long time!