TechEvangelism

I have tested only on Ubuntu, but this might apply to some other distros.

Some people follow this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DefaultFileManager

but it makes nautilus useless. That's bad!

Instead of changing the way nautilus works, you just want to get rid of it - and let other people use it if they want.

As sudo:
1 - Open the files:

/usr/share/applications/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop

and

/usr/share/applications/kde4/dolphin.desktop

2 - Replace the contents of the MimeType of the dolphin.desktop with the one from nautilus-folder-handler.desktop (replace the entire line).

3 - Run

update-desktop-database -v

Here it worked out of the box... if it doesn't work for you, don't worry.

1 - Open

/usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

2 - Locate each occurrence of kd4-dolphin.desktop and place it before any other option.
For instance:

x-directory/gnome-default-handler=nautilus-folder-handler.desktop;kde4-dolphin.desktop;

should be:

x-directory/gnome-default-handler=kde4-dolphin.desktop;nautilus-folder-handler.desktop;

As a bonus, each user can have a mimeinfo.cache on

$HOME/local/share/applications

and specify it's own order. No logout required.



It's on a per user basis, it won't be smart enough to detect if you're running KDE or not. But you are .
For instance, you can make a script to make copies of the mimeinfo.cache file locally and execute scripts when starting your desktop environment to make a symbolic link to the right mimeinfo.cache.

At least for a per user basis, you can leave one safe system default (GNOME) and one for you.


Note: Firefox uses x-directoroy/gnome-default-handler instead of x-directory/normal, as one would expect.
Note 2: The MimeType change is required.