Seven and twelve years ago, I measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was, first by analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive, then by analysing the DEP-11 AppStream data set. I guess it is time to repeat the measurement, only for unstable as last time:
Debian Unstable:
count MIME type
----- -----------------------
63 image/png
63 image/jpeg
57 image/tiff
54 image/gif
51 image/bmp
50 audio/mpeg
48 text/plain
42 audio/x-mp3
40 application/ogg
39 audio/x-wav
39 audio/x-flac
36 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
35 audio/x-mpeg
34 audio/x-mpegurl
34 audio/ogg
33 application/x-ogg
32 audio/mp4
31 audio/x-scpls
31 application/pdf
29 audio/x-ms-wma
The list was created like this using a sid chroot:
cat /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz | \
zcat | awk '/^ - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | \
uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20
It is nice to see that the same number of packages now support PNG and JPEG. Last time JPEG had more support than PNG. Most of the MIME types are known to me, but the 'audio/x-scpls' one I have no idea what represent, except it being an audio format. To find the packages claiming support for this format, the appstreamcli command from the appstream package can be used:
% appstreamcli what-provides mediatype audio/x-scpls | grep Package: | sort -u Package: alsaplayer-common Package: amarok Package: audacious Package: brasero Package: celluloid Package: clapper Package: clementine Package: cynthiune.app Package: elisa Package: gtranscribe Package: kaffeine Package: kmplayer Package: kylin-burner Package: lollypop Package: mediaconch-gui Package: mediainfo-gui Package: mplayer-gui Package: mpv Package: mystiq Package: parlatype Package: parole Package: pragha Package: qmmp Package: rhythmbox Package: sayonara Package: shotcut Package: smplayer Package: soundconverter Package: strawberry Package: syncplay Package: vlc %
Look like several video and auto tools understand the format. Similarly one can check out the number of packages supporting the STL format commonly used for 3D printing:
% appstreamcli what-provides mediatype model/stl | grep Package: | sort -u Package: cura Package: freecad Package: open3d-viewer %
How strange the slic3r and prusa-slicer packages do not support STL. Perhaps just missing package metadata? Luckily the amount of package metadata in Debian is getting better, and hopefully this way of locating relevant packages for any file format will be the preferred one soon.
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