Ubuntu 12.10 .blend file association

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#1

Hi guys,

I’m running Ubuntu 12.10 and have Blender 2.66 installed manually - not through a PPA or the Software Centre. In other words from blender.org from an archive.

It’s running fine and I created a Launcher Icon which is currently sitting in my user folder/.local/share/applications and duplicated in the Unity Launcher.
(I used the handy addon/script for Nautilus to do this called “Arronax” - ‘Create Starter for this file’)

Placing my launcher file in my home Applications is one of the default saving locations for .desktop files with Arronax. Although I imagine there is a File System area that could be better perhaps - although I don’t know if it’s necassary.

So to get to the point :wink: I’d like to associate my .blend files with Blender (remember blender isn’t installed as such) so that I can click on them to launch within Blender as I did in Windows.

I’ve read since whichever version of Gnome Ubuntu 12.10 uses, there isn’t an option to run “Open With” that you can select a file over a program - obviously Blender doesn’t show up in the open with list as it isn’t installed :wink:

Can anyone explain what the steps are to get the associations to work please?

Edited: I’ve got a fix below :slight_smile:

#2

Have you tried everything on this page?

#3

No worries xrg, I’ve found out a solution that worked. I’m starting to see that there should be a Linux>Ubuntu section in Blender Artists forum regarding such things I’ve been learning lately to run Blender nicely in Ubuntu - It’d stop a lot of people getting put off by Linux/Ubuntu.

Please those who organise this Forum (love you guys) make a section titled “Linux” with subsections of the main Distros e.g Ubuntu, plus some stickies on various topics, like “Cuda”, “Installing Nvidia Drivers in Ubuntu”, “Creating a shortcut icon to Launch Blender” and this one, “Open .blend files by double clicking in Ubuntu 12.04 upwards”.

I don’t like posting up others descriptions to fix problems as the links dissapear over time, but it explains it pretty well what you need to do and it’d take me an age to re-write it:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11288489

Now I have not only Blender in Ubuntu 12.10 launching from the Unity Launcher, but I also can now double-click a .blend file to launch Blender and the scene altogether - Excellent!