How to write commands with default variables for terminal or default app (Browser, Terminal) so it would work on any Ubuntu or Debian?

For example Ubuntu mate has mate-terminal How to write commands that would open in each distro with befault terminal and browser? So in this command line wouldnt be mate-terminal and firefox but some wrapper of them for any distro user default apps of terminal or browser.

mate-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; dpkg -S "\/bin/$(xprop WM_CLASS | cut -d "\"" -f2)"; sleep 5; firefox'

how to find default app variables or wrappers so that command would be running in any distro terminal apps? How to find also default browser or text editor variables?

3 Answers

If you need to run the same command on multiple platforms / distributions there is a workaround which involves writing customized copies of the same command and separating them with the || operator which will try to execute the next command if the first command fails.

Example

Command for mate-terminal:

mate-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; echo "hi"; sleep 5; firefox'

Command for gnome-terminal:

gnome-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; echo "hi"; sleep 5; firefox'

Command that will run on either terminal:

mate-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; echo "hi"; sleep 5; firefox' || gnome-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; echo "hi"; sleep 5; firefox'

Command that will run on either terminal and launch either firefox, google-chrome or chromium:

mate-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; echo "hi"; sleep 5; firefox || google-chrome || chromium' || gnome-terminal -- bash -c 'sleep 2; echo "hi"; sleep 5; firefox || google-chrome || chromium'

This will however require looking into target platforms to find out how to correctly run the command.

Best of luck

I do not know much about how different distribution set their preferred apps for web browser and terminal emulator, but I do for Xfce desktop environment. Maybe you can do the same with other DEs, if you install exo-utils package.

The preferred applications would be set by running

exo-preferred-applications

and your example command (purpose of which is unknown to me) would be formulated like this:

exo-open --launch TerminalEmulator bash -c 'sleep 2; dpkg -S "\/bin/$(xprop WM_CLASS | cut -d "\"" -f2)"; sleep 5; exo-open --launch WebBrowser; read'

read is needed because the web browser might close with the terminal window.

Here is rewrite of your command using Debian's alternatives system:

x-terminal-emulator -e bash -c 'sleep 2; dpkg -S "\/bin/$(xprop WM_CLASS | cut -d "\"" -f2)"; sleep 5; x-www-browser'

Note the use of -e for the command the terminal emulator should run.

If you would like to change the default terminal emulator you would run

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

Respectively, to change the default web browser you would run

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser