Navdeep Shergill (A Geek at heart)

How to setup the default web browser in Kubuntu

Kubuntu is a Ubuntu derived distribution. The only difference between the two is that Kubuntu comes with a KDE desktop environment; while Ubuntu has Gnome. Its just a matter of preference which one you want to use. Anyways; since Kubuntu is KDE based; it comes with its own web browser called “Konqueror”. To be honest I did not give Konqueror that much time to win me over. I am a pretty avid Firefox user and it was one of the first applications I installed. The problem that I ran into was that all our KDE applications were still using Konqueror as their browser. For example; whenever I would click on MSN inbox from Kopete; it would open up in Konqueror. That was pretty annoying to me; so I went about fixing it.

Here is my trial/error approach to try to figure out what setting to change.

1. The first place I looked was in Kopete itself. I went into ‘Settings->Configure’ but could not find any relevant option.
2. Lets look at Firefox itself now. If you look under ‘Edit->Preferences’; there is an option called ‘Default Browser’. Hmm.. this looks like the place I asked ‘Firefox to check if it was the default browser’; but no such check came up.
3. Lets go to the System settings and see if something shows up there. Go to ‘System Settings’ under the KDE menu. Once I got to the “System Settings”; it took me a while to see where to go next. Eventually; I found the relevant option under ‘KDE Components’. Go to ‘Default Applications’; and set up your web browser here. I chose Firefox; and saved the settings. However; this did not affect the earlier behavior. Kopete still launched Konqueror whenever I clicked on a http link.
4. Ok; at this point I was getting frustrated. So I launched Konqueror itself to see if there was any option that I can change there to ‘unset’ it as the default browser. Go to ‘Settings->Configure Konqueror’. Next go to ‘file associations’. This is where it gets a little bit confusing. Look for ‘text’ in the list of file types and expand that. Once you expand it; chose ‘html’. Now you will see that ‘Konqueror’ is listed ‘before’ Firefox. So that was the culprit! I went ahead and moved Firefox up in the list and now Kopete launches Firefox.

18 comments May 16th, 2006

Some stats from my 15 minutes of fame - Digg stats

So yesterday; I ended up on Digg. I have been reading digg for the past 4-5 months and I never thought I would get on their front page. I mean I kinda had that goal in mind when I started this blog. I think every geek would love to be featured on it. One of the nice things about being on digg is that I was also featured on the ‘popular’ page at del.icio.us. So all in all; it was a nice day for this site yesterday. Here are some stats…

Total number of visits was 4487. The avg daily visits before that was about 120-150. Today I got about 750 vistors. Lets see what the lasting effect of being on Digg is..
The most popular browser was Firefox. Out of top 5 browsers used; 4 of them were some version of Firefox. Internet Explorer had a 15% share. I guess the Digg crowd is much more up to date with their browser selection than the general public; which is not a surprise.
Windows was however the top operating system with 80% share. Linux came in next; above Mac OSX. That was not too surprising considering the topic of the post had to do with Linux.
The next stat we are going to look at is the resolution. The top resolution was 1280×1024. It was closely followed by 1024×768; with 1600×1200 coming a distant third. 800×600 was not in the top 5 at all. The biggest resolution I found in the logs was: 3200×1200 (10 people).
This one is just shown for good measure. It shows me featured on the home page of del.icio.us. I just had to take a screenshot of that. I know its pretty cheesy; but….

So there you go. That was how this site did yesterday, Thanks to Digg

Add comment May 16th, 2006

My Kubuntu usage these days

Ever since I installed Kubuntu last week; I have been spending more and more time in it. This past weekend was a ‘Kubuntu Only’ weekend. I did not boot back into XP at all. I don’t know if it is due to a ‘fresh OS Install’; but my computer just feels so much ’snappier’. I’m sure the low memory footprint of Kubuntu (linux in general) also has something to do with it. Majority of my usage in Kubuntu has been with 3 main apps.

1. Firefox - for general web surfing
2. Akregator - for RSS feeds
3. Amarok - an iTunes like music player

Kubuntu is doing all three of these functions really well. I do not miss anything about my XP machine. The only thing that is sorta lacking is a good IM client. I am a pretty big user of GoogleTalk. I only communicate with a few people on IM; but the people I do communicate with are pretty important in my life. As I mentioned earlier; I was able to configure Kopete to work with GoogleTalk; but the interface is not as nicer/cleaner as GTalk. It just feels a little rough around the edges. I wonder if Google will ever release their linux version; or maybe I should write my own. After all; isn’t that the spirit of Linux.

Add comment May 16th, 2006