Hi Carsten, just by chance I read this thread. It might be a good idea to announce this somehow for package maintainers on a prominent place in the change-log of the next official release. Some Linux package systems do allow recommendation on packages. As I understood the xdg-utils package is not mandatory for using org-mode, because it would work without xdg-open too. However, we could ask the package maintainers to make a recommendation to install xdg-util whenever, org-mode gets installed. Just a nice customer service ;) BTW: Emacs itself does *not* require xdg-utils or refer to it as optional. That would have made it even easier to assume it is already on all Linux systems. All the best Torsten On 2 September 2013 12:08, Carsten Dominik wrote: > Hi everyone, > > OK, we now use xdg-open when available on a Linux system. > > Thanks to everyone for the input. > > - Carsten > > On Sep 2, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Suvayu Ali > wrote: > > > Hi Carsten, > > > > On Mon, Sep 02, 2013 at 10:44:39AM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote: > >> > >> On Sep 2, 2013, at 10:34 AM, Jambunathan K > wrote: > >> > >>> '(org-file-apps-defaults-gnu > >>> (quote > >>> ((remote . emacs) > >>> (system . "xdg-open %s") > >>> (t . mailcap))) t)) > >>> > >> > >> > >> I have not followed the discussion earlier. The problem I see is that > >> I do not know how widely available these commands are on Linux. Maybe > >> we can built the default value using executable-find or something like > >> this? > > > > I think I can shed some light on the availability of xdg-open. It is > > provided by xdg-utils, part of the freedesktop specification. It is > > expected to be present in most desktop systems (almost anything with a > > GUI installed). It is a direct dependency for kde-libs, gnome-libs, and > > many desktop applications. > > > > The introduction in this Archlinux wiki page gives a very succint > > summary: > > > > Hope this helps, > > > > -- > > Suvayu > > > > Open source is the future. It sets us free. > > > > > > > > > > >