Petter Reinholdtsen

What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?
16th January 2013

The DEP-11 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive, is a proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is downloaded by the browser.

To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result can be found on the Skolelinux FTP site. Using the collected information, it become possible to answer the question in the title. Here are the 20 most supported MIME types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid). The complete list is available from the link above.

Debian Stable:

  count MIME type
  ----- -----------------------
     32 text/plain
     30 audio/mpeg
     29 image/png
     28 image/jpeg
     27 application/ogg
     26 audio/x-mp3
     25 image/tiff
     25 image/gif
     22 image/bmp
     22 audio/x-wav
     20 audio/x-flac
     19 audio/x-mpegurl
     18 video/x-ms-asf
     18 audio/x-musepack
     18 audio/x-mpeg
     18 application/x-ogg
     17 video/mpeg
     17 audio/x-scpls
     17 audio/ogg
     16 video/x-ms-wmv

Debian Testing:

  count MIME type
  ----- -----------------------
     33 text/plain
     32 image/png
     32 image/jpeg
     29 audio/mpeg
     27 image/gif
     26 image/tiff
     26 application/ogg
     25 audio/x-mp3
     22 image/bmp
     21 audio/x-wav
     19 audio/x-mpegurl
     19 audio/x-mpeg
     18 video/mpeg
     18 audio/x-scpls
     18 audio/x-flac
     18 application/x-ogg
     17 video/x-ms-asf
     17 text/html
     17 audio/x-musepack
     16 image/x-xbitmap

Debian Unstable:

  count MIME type
  ----- -----------------------
     31 text/plain
     31 image/png
     31 image/jpeg
     29 audio/mpeg
     28 application/ogg
     27 image/gif
     26 image/tiff
     26 audio/x-mp3
     23 audio/x-wav
     22 image/bmp
     21 audio/x-flac
     20 audio/x-mpegurl
     19 audio/x-mpeg
     18 video/x-ms-asf
     18 video/mpeg
     18 audio/x-scpls
     18 application/x-ogg
     17 audio/x-musepack
     16 video/x-ms-wmv
     16 video/x-msvideo

I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of information mentioned in DEP-11. I have not yet had time to look at it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these issues.

Update 2013-01-16 13:35: Updated numbers after discovering a typo in my script.

Tags: debian, english.

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