associating extensions with applications

[Evan Klitzke]

On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 07:36 -0800, Gerhard Magnus wrote:
> Does Linux, or more specifically the Gnome desktop, have a widget like
> the one in Windows that associates file extensions with applications so
> that, for example, when I double-click on a ".txt" file it opens in my
> favorite text editor?  Do file extensions have any significance in
> Linux?  Thanks for the help! -- Jerry

This is generally a MIME thing. Your DE will determine a MIME type
associated with the file based on the file's headers (or extension if
necessary) and look up what application is associated with that MIME
type. I'm not sure if you're using Gnome or KDE, but there is a standard
way of doing this that you can read about here:
http://www.gnome.org/learn/admin-guide/latest/mimetypes-registering.html

I believe that these settings can also be configured using gconf with
Gnome.

-- Evan Klitzke