chewearn's blog

Background

This is a quick tip for those using Krusader in Ubuntu Hardy (with Gnome). Krusader is, arguably, the most comprehensive dual pane file manager for Linux.

In Ubuntu, you could install Krusader version 1.90.0 from the universe repository.

The problem

First, the flv mime type handling by Krusader is undefined in Ubuntu. Instead of launching a video player, you get an ‘Open with” dialogbox when you double-click on a flv file. Second, there is no “Remember application association for these type of file” checkbox. In other words, you are presented with the “Open with” dialogbox every single time, and there is no option for you to change that.

Third, Krusader, being a “KDE application”, stored the mime type settings separately from Gnome’s Nautilus file manager. Consequently, fixing the flv association in Nautilus does nothing for Krusader.

This was filed as a KDE bug; however, it is only fixed for KDE4. Meanwhile, I believed you could rectify this using the KDE Control Centre if you are running Krusader in KDE3. But if you are running Gnome, you would need to edit the configuration manually, as explained below.

Workaround

Create a file “~/.kde/share/mimelnk/video/flv.desktop”.

gedit ~/.kde/share/mimelnk/video/flv.desktop

Copy/paste these lines.

[Desktop Entry]
Icon=video
MimeType=video/flv;
Patterns=*.flv;*.FLV;
Type=MimeType
Comment=Flash Video
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=desktop_kdelibs

Save the file. Restart Krusader if you have it opened when you made the changes above. Now, you should also be able to set the file association thru the “Open with” dialogbox.