Table of Contents

Desktop
- XDG
- Gnome
  - Files
- Xfce
  - Files

Desktop

XDG

open a file with associated application: xdg-open image.png

XDG (Cross-Desktop Group) Configuration:

freedesktop.org: XDG Specifications
ArchWiki: Desktop entries

Gnome

show GNOME configuration (registry) entries, starting from root: gconftool-2 -R /
restart of GNOME panel: killall gnome-panel
publish user dir templates: xdg-user-dirs-update

Files

/etc/xdg/user-dirs.default: adoption of users home directory templates
~/.config/user-dirs.dirs: users (current) home directory templates
.hidden: hide all files listed in .hidden from file manager (Nautilus, Thunar) view
~/.local/share/applications: private desktop files
/usr/share/applications: global desktop files

Xfce

ArchWiki: Xfce - Session

exo-open <url>: frontend to the Xfce Preferred Applications framework, which can either be used to open a list of urls with the default URL handler or launch the preferred application for a certain category.¹⁾

Files

~/.config/mimeapps.list: users (changed) MIME associations

¹⁾

Typically exo-open is called from desktop-independent tool xdg-open.