Be honest. What did you say that offended Firefox so bad it decided to leave?
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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That he prefers Edge's mother's cooking.
When the questions you ask chatGPT even offend the browser you're using!
Did it really uninstall itself? Run this command and check whether you can see Firefox's ID or not:
flatpak list
If firefox is still in /usr/lib64/firefox, then it should still be there. Maybe just the .desktop file is removed?
OP mentioned that it was the Flatpak version, which doesnt add anything to root owned parts of the filesystem.
More than likely it was a failed package transition that failed. You were running one version, an update triggered, something went wrong, and your data folders got orphaned. You can try running a repair on the package, but they usually fail the same way.
As someone formerly involved in security at the enterprise OS development scope, I consider one less Flatpak to be an improvement in security and consistency.
Well done!
wow, really? That contradicts everything i heard about Flatpaks
people say this all the time but the reasons they give are always nonsense in my experience, sandboxing alone makes flatpak betteh
what distro?
Fedora 41
It's... weird, did you do something that accidentally deleted firefox?
I removed the preinstalled version, and installed the Flatpak version because it's more up to date, then i Installed Portmaster.. That's about it
I don’t have any advice for this exact problem but if it’s any consolation Firefox has randomly gotten offended at my video drivers and bricked my build. Multiple times. I use Librewolf when I can now.
That is hilarious though, sending frustrated IT vibes your way in both empathy and hopes it’ll help you reach the critical mass of superstition for the problem to fix itself before you have to threaten to take a hammer to it.
And that's why I don't use flatpaks. Nothing like that has ever happened to me.
I use Flatpaks because they're supposedly more sandboxed thus more secure, especially in something that is exposed to the Internet like a web browser, I need all the sandboxing I can get..
I wish it doesn't happen again, because I spent 2 hours tweaking Firefox, importing data to my extensions and some of them I have to configure manually..
Actually, in the case of a web browser, Flatpak weakens both Firefox's and Chromium's internal sandboxing, possibly allowing for breaking of cross-site or site-host boundaries. Firefox is even weaker then Chromium as a Flatpak because it can't use the zypak fork server. Both are weakened, best to avoid.
For basically any other app, Flatpak can be beneficial as a sandbox.
Basically, don't sandbox browsers because its like wearing 2 condoms. The only sandboxing tool I know that doesn't interfere with the browser's sandbox (and also doesnt allow for the possibility of privilege escalation, like Firejail) is Bubblejail
PS: Since you mentioned you are on Fedora, Bubblejail is offered through this COPR repo from the Secureblue team. It provides a sandbox without interfering with the browser's sandbox. It comes with profiles for Firefox and Chromium. Only issue ive experienced is that the sandbox works, aka it means I can't access files from my home directory unless explicitly given permission to a folder.
You still have the binary then. Type firefox into the terminal.
It says: bash: firefox: command not found...
Install package 'firefox' to provide command 'firefox'? [N/y]
What this person told you was wrong, you need to use flatpak run [package id] to run flatpak apps. You can do flatpak list to see all installed flatpaks with their ids. An id looks something like org.example.app and you'd run it with flatpak run org.example.app.
Also, is it shown as being installed in Discover? If it's not you could try just installing it again and if it is, you can try uninstalling it first. The user data for Firefox should stay intact.
And if ever unsure, look up Firefox on flathub; every app page shows the command line instructions for installing and for running it.
Bash will cache command locations so it doesn't need to scan your path too frequently. You can clear it with "hash -r".
See the other comment about running flatpaks - it's their fatal flaw imho.