[xubuntu-users] Strange: thunderbird won't open links ..

[Peter Flynn]

On 15/01/2026 22:00, Marc Coevoet wrote:
> Op 15-01-2026 om 22:51 schreef Peter Flynn:
>> On 15/01/2026 21:43, Marc Coevoet wrote:
>> What is the filetype of the link (if it's not a web page)? Can you 
>> post the URL?
> 
> https

No, not the method, the file type. I assume you can open other https 
resources OK, is that right? Or are ALL https pages blocked?

This is EITHER the last token of the URL (eg .html, .pdf, .jpg, etc) OR 
the Content-Type header sent by the server in response to your click. 
You can find the response headers from the command line with (eg) wget 
by using the -S option.

>> What "other app"?
> 
> a button that lets you choose --> click --> nothing happens ...

No, I meant what is the name of this "other app" and where is this button?

On 16/01/2026 16:21, Victor Forberger wrote:
 > I have the same problem on my laptop. No links or file types can be
 > opened directly from within Thunderbird.

I remember now what my problem was. It was the xdg-open utility which 
was wrongly configured for whatever type of file I was trying to open.

XDG is a PITA, IMNSHO (great for acronyms today 😂

Once you have the file type, you can see what your system is configured 
to do with that type of file when Tbird (or anything else) cannot handle 
it alone, using the xdg-mime query option, eg

$ xdg-mime query default application/pdf
xreader.desktop
$ xdg-mime query default application/xml
vivaldi-stable.desktop

My guess is that whatever file type it is that you are clicking on, is 
something your system is not configured to handle, OR (equally likely) 
Tbird is ignoring XDG's suggestion for weird reasons of it own.

I once had Tbird refuse to open a saved email message with the .eml file 
type, despite the entry for message/rfc822 being in /etc/mime.types. It 
turned out that the system setup had neglected to put an entry for this 
in XDG's config (a file called defaults.list somewhere, I forget where).

Peter