Evil Home Stereo

Have you ever noticed that stupid icon “Java Web Start” the JRE throws on your desktop if you install it on Windows? Have you ever tried it instead of deleting it immediately? The idea behind it is quite nifty though nothing really new. If you click on a so-called JNLP file (”Java Network Launching Protocol”), an application is loaded on your box and can be started immediately. Something like Java Applets on speed. Or An Administrator’s Worst Nightmare, I’m not sure.

Whatever, out of interest I tried to use it on my KDE box. And it didn’t work (of course). The Installation Guide offers a short guide for Mozilla (or better: Netscape). It’s actually so vague that it also applies to Konqueror (use the File Associations options).

Instead of following the step-by-step guide (and probably miss some details) you can also just install a small desktop file to $KDEHOME/share/mimelnk/application — the KDEHOME environment variable defaults to what the command kde-config –localprefix tells you. If you want to install it system-wide, put it into the subdirectory application below the directory the command kde-config –install mime –expandvars gives you. I guess you might have to run kbuildsycoca afterwards (restarting KDE will definitely help).

As GNOME and KDE share the same syntax for desktop files, it should be possible to use that file on GNOME, too, but I have no clue where you have to put it.