Install and Use Nemo as default file manager in Ubuntu

After I upgraded to Mint 15 I had a bunch of issues on both my machines. Considering I had resorted to using Gnome fallback session instead of Mate or Cinnamon anyway I decided to reinstall Ubuntu which will hopefully be less buggy.

One of the things I like better about Mint is the Nemo file manager, which is streets ahead of the default Gnome file manager, the imaginatively named "Files".

Googling for "install nemo ubuntu" or similar returns a bunch of people suggesting you install the "noobslab" repository like this:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/nemo

You can do that if you want to, but if you prefer to minimise the number of third party repositories on your system you can simply enable the ubuntu-backports  repo in your sources list instead.

Whichever way you choose, simply install Nemo like this:

sudo apt-get install nemo

Now that Nemo is intalled, we should make it the default file manager too. Enter this into the terminal console:

xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search

And that's all folks.