Not only does that file not exist… ~/.local/share/applilcations (the directory) doesn’t exist. Nor would I expect it to…I’ve made no user mods as of the time I start the disposable; I haven’t even hunted through the menu for the app I want (which seems to create a user override).
This is why I am so frustrated by this. It’s being set SOMEWHERE. It must be. I’ve periodically tried to navigate through the mime files in the past when I can find something that will tell me where to look, and seem to find nothing but sequences of links that go around and around in circles.
None of the docs will explain what’s actually going on; they point to files that don’t exist. Either there’s some “default” parsing of the app definitions (i.e., the files that say such-and-such app can deal with such-and-such file types) that doesn’t rely on a file, or some totally random process just happens to have worked the same way every time I create the disposable template, and works the same way every time I run a disposable based on the template.
I do have a file named /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache, but that seems to be the result of this process, not the cause. It’s dated the time I created my template. Maybe it’s manipulated by the installers? But even so it does not have a [Defaults] section, just a [MIME Cache] section.
Some docs reference ~/.config/mimeapps.list and this does not exist on my system either…until I try to open a PDF and tell it to open a different app. Now ~/.config/mimeapps.list exists. (and ~/.local/share/applications still does not.)
So I have the situation where the allegedly basic docs in ArchLinuxLand point me to a system default file that does not exist, and user overrides of whereverthehell the system defaults are, don’t go where expected (based on the docs) either, but at least they do go somewhere.
Why not just use .config/mimeapps.list? I will if I have to, but really I’d rather go to the system defaults since I am creating a template. I just can’t figure out where the heck they are!!
[edit: I discovered that by swapping the order the programs are listed in mimeinfo.cache, I could alter which one is the default. I did that in the template. However, I can’t get them to change order in mimeinfo.cache without editing it. I even tried regenerating the template and installing the programs in the opposite order, and that did not work. So the questions remain: What’s being read by the system to create mimeinfo.cache? Why does one app end up listed first for a file type regardless of installation order?]
