The mess that is 'default browser'

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 6 Nov 2021 16:38:49 +0000 "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> I have recently changed from Firefox to Opera on one of my systems.
> So I told Opera to set itself as the default browser, hmmmm!
> 
> On investigating I found that the whole 'default browser' set up is a
> disaster, after setting Opera as default I see the following on the
> 21.10 system where I changed from Firefox to Opera:-
> 
>     /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser points at /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser
>     which points at /usr/bin/opera.
> 
>     /usr/bin/x-www-browser points at /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser
>     which points at /usr/bin/firefox.
> 
>     /usr/bin/sensible-browser is a script which checks the BROWSER
>     environment variable if that's not set will try gnome-www-browser
>     and then x-www-browser.
> 
> On another (21.04) system where I have been using Epiphany/Web in
> parallel with Firefox both gnome-www-browser and x-www-browser are set
> to epiphany-browser in /etc/alternatives but the BROWSER environment
> variable is still set to Firefox.
> 
> 
> So I am at a bit of a loss as to what program name to use to call a
> web browser in scripts!  I guess the best approach might be to use
> sensible-browser and set the BROWSER environment variable.  It does
> make a bit of a nonsense of 'default browser' though!

The "default browser" idea is either a M$ or Apple invention (I don't who came
up with that partitular idea). With both MS-Windows and MacOSX there is only
*one* GUI desktop, so this sort of weirdness can't occur. And MS-Windows and
MacOSX users don't generally use scripts. 

Under UNIX and Linux, the idea of a global "default" anything is a little
weird, partitularly for something like this. Normally, each utility has its
own defaults and/or has its on settings mechanism or expects some envrironment
variable to be set, with some fallback. 


> 

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