Sometimes when tweaking and adjusting a system a need to select the default applications may arise. In Linux systems selecting the defaults has been made easy via terminal with update alternatives commands

In oder to take advantage of update alternatives open your terminal (gnome-terminal, lxterminal…) and use for example following commands to adjust your system.

Note: there should not be space between – –

update-alternatives – -config x-window-manager   This configures the Default entry of session manager (gdm, lightdm…)

update-alternatives – -config x-terminal-emulator This configures the preference for terminal interface if multiple selections are available.

update-alternatives – -config x-www-browser This configures the default web browser of your choice

update-alternatives – -config x-cursor-theme This configures the default mouse theme to be used (usually found at /usr/share/themes path)

update-alternatives – -config gnome-text-editor This configures the default text editor (geany, gedit…)

If you want to create a custom update alternative see below for an example.

Creating a custom alternative

update-alternatives – -install /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor gnome-text-editor /usr/bin/geany 900

alternatives link name           name in alt dir   actual program name and priority in the system.

Removing an update alternative

update-alternatives – -remove  gnome-text-editor /usr/bin/geany

If you need more information about update-alternatives be sure to check the manual packages by writing man update-alternatives in the terminal.