Everyone's needs from a Linux desktop is different from others. Hence each desktop is configured in a unique way. I have a couple of strange needs from my desktop, so mine is 'different' in it's own way.
I am a GNOME convert. However, there are some KDE apps I still like. For example, I use Kmail for my mails. Hence I install both KDE and GNOME on my system, but run GNOME as the default desktop. When I click on a web link in kmail, I want it to open in Firefox. However, by default kmail opens web links in Konqueror. This is because it uses KDE's default settings. So what I do is I go to KDE's control center and set the default application for html to be Firefox. This fixes the problem. Or it did all these days.
On My new Fedora 9 desktop, the above trick did not work. I suspect KDE4 that is shipped with Fedora9 does not like Firefox. I ensured that my GNOME
settings too make Firefox the default web browser, but web links still kept opening in Konqueror. I googled, but only found references to things I
had already tried.
Can I just remove konqueror from my system, since I don't use it anyway? Well, no. It is part of kdebase rpm. So it looks like Konqueror is closely tied to KDE. Hmm.. can I remove the konqueror binary from /usr/bin? When I did that, kmail did not open the weblinks at all. I suspect it reported an error somewhere that it could not find the browser, but it said nothing directly to me through an error window! Next, I wanted to find out how kmail finds out the browser application. After straceing and ltraceing kde binaries running on my system, I had found nothing.
That's when Srikar reminded me of an old trick in the bag. Replace /usr/bin/konqueror with a symlink to /usr/bin/firefox :) This of course worked as expected. I know it is a horrible hack. It must have broken a few things in the KDE desktop. However, I don't use KDE as the desktop. I just need apps. Hence, it works for me :)
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