Handle apt urls better in Ubuntu Gnome 13.10

After using Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 for a few months now I’ve decided it’s the spin for me. Everything is succinct, in it’s place and accessible. Nothing surprises me, nothing gets lost and it looks good!

Only a few niggles remain and I intend to iron them out over the coming weeks. The first is only small really but has been bugging me: Firefox’s handling (or not) of apt links.

When an apt link is clicked or loaded in FF I found that it would prompt me to use a program to open the url.. but not actually give me a launcher or launchers to choose from. A quick bit of googling provided the answer so I thought I would share it with everyone else. Also, I really can’t stand the Ubuntu software centre – it’s sluggish, often crashes and is in general a bit of a nuisance.

This tutorial will fix the problem of not having a functioning apt url handler but also streamline it by using the apturl program to install instead.

First, fire up Firefox.

Next open preferences and navigate to the Applications tab:

Screenshot from 2013-11-19 20:14:14
Next to where it says apt in the Content Type column, click the always ask drop down menu and click use other. In the window that pops up navigate to /usr/bin (you will need to click the File System book mark on the left to get to the root of your file system) and find the apturl-gtk executable.
Screenshot from 2013-11-19 20:38:03
Click the open button at the bottom and your done! Now when you click an apt link Ubuntu knows what to do with it! Below is an example of what it looks like:
Screenshot from 2013-11-19 20:43:23

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