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rda
Asked: 2014-12-15 04:40:55 +0800 CST

How can I open pdf files by default with foxit?

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I'm new to ubuntu as I come from Win7. In win7 I was using Foxit Reader to open the pdf documents.

Searching online I found this method to install Foxit. 

cd Downloads/  
tar -xvf FoxitReader-1.1.0.tar.bz2  
cd 1.1-release/  
./FoxitReader

As you can see, in order to open foxit I have to run it from cmd, but I'll like to automatically open the pdf files with Foxit. How can I do that?

command-line

2 Answers

  1. A solution is to look for the *.desktop file FoxitReader.desktop and add % F at the end of the line starting with Exec

    More in details: in my Ubuntu 16.04 machine I found the file in the following folder

    cd /$HOME/FoxitSoftware/FoxitReader/
vim FoxitReader.desktop

    The file initially was like this:

      1 [Desktop Entry]
  2 Name=Foxit Reader
  3 Comment=View pdf documents
  4 Keywords=pdf;octet-stream;
  5 StartupNotify=true
  6 Terminal=false
  7 Type=Application
  8 #Icon=FoxitReader
  9 X-GNOME-DocPath=
 10 X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
 11 X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=FoxitReader
 12 X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=BugBuddyBugs
 13 X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=3.14.1
 14 Categories=GNOME;Viewer;Graphics;2DGraphics;VectorGraphics;
 15 MimeType=application/pdf;application/octet-stream;
 16 Exec=/home/pbirol/FoxitSoftware/FoxitReader/FoxitReader.sh
 17 Icon=/home/pbirol/FoxitSoftware/FoxitReader/images/FoxitReader.png

    I modified only the 16th line and added %F at the end:

     16 Exec=/home/pbirol/FoxitSoftware/FoxitReader/FoxitReader.sh %F

    Since most of my *.desktop files are in the folder /usr/share/applications/ I also copied it there, just to be sure (however, I am not sure this part is necessary)

    sudo cp FoxitReader.desktop /usr/share/applications/

    Now FoxitReader is part of the list of programs recognized by ubuntu in the "open with" list, so I just went to a pdf file, right-clicked > Open with > View all applications and chose FoxitReader

    • 1

  2. You just need to go where is your PDF file, click with the right button, and then click on "Open with". Hope that it solved your problem =D

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