How to Change the Default Browser in Xubuntu

I am using Xubuntu 12.04 on my main workstation at home and for the longest time I have been trying to make Google Chrome my default browser on that machine. I've tried several things that didn't work or worked but would not persist when I rebooted the machine. Well, that changed just recently...

Recently I found out that there is a configuration file at ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list that you can change and make it stick. Just replace all references to firefox.desktop with google-chrome.desktop.

Here are the relevant current values:

[Added Associations]
x-scheme-handler/http=exo-web-browser.desktop;google-chrome.desktop;
x-scheme-handler/https=exo-web-browser.desktop;google-chrome.desktop;
...
x-scheme-handler/ftp=google-chrome.desktop;
x-scheme-handler/chrome=google-chrome.desktop;
text/html=google-chrome.desktop;
application/x-extension-htm=google-chrome.desktop;
application/x-extension-html=google-chrome.desktop;
application/x-extension-shtml=google-chrome.desktop;
application/xhtml+xml=google-chrome.desktop;
application/x-extension-xhtml=google-chrome.desktop;
application/x-extension-xht=google-chrome.desktop;

[Default Applications]
...
application/x-mimearchive=google-chrome.desktop
...
x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/https=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/ftp=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/chrome=google-chrome.desktop
text/html=google-chrome.desktop
application/x-extension-htm=google-chrome.desktop
application/x-extension-html=google-chrome.desktop
application/x-extension-shtml=google-chrome.desktop
application/xhtml+xml=google-chrome.desktop
application/x-extension-xhtml=google-chrome.desktop
application/x-extension-xht=google-chrome.desktop

The ... above means that I omitted 1 or more lines for brevity. Hope this works for you too.

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