[SOLVED] It is possible to remove firefox-esr whthout installing other browser ?

[penguin]

Hi ..

I use Opera as my browser. MX Linux offers Firefox as second browser-default by install.Firefox becomes to have things/tricks hidden in about:config also some settings are restricted and gray out ... Admistrator bla bla..., I thought to remove it totally and install Pale Moon. So I did. I removed Firefox by Synaptic and manually all remaining entries. Every thing goes fine. But when I run Mx Updates , MX wants to reinstall the Firefox-Esr.

Using in Terminal :
sudo apt-get purge firefox*
Gives me the follow :

Code: Select all

The following additional packages will be installed:
  epiphany-browser epiphany-browser-data libavahi-gobject0
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  firefox-esr*
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  epiphany-browser epiphany-browser-data libavahi-gobject0
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 1 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,029 kB of archives.
After this operation, 154 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

The only way I found to avoid this is locking of firefox-esr from Synaptic.

Any other way to stop MX Linux aka Debian to stop reintalling of firefox-esr my way to resolve this issue is the only one ?

[skidoo]

way to stop prevent MX Linux aka Debian to stop reinstalling of firefox-esr

sudo apt-mark hold firefox-esr

[jonnken]

how would one find all those other "hidden" Firefox files?

[Stevo]

You must have something installed that depends on virtual packages gnome-www-browser or www-browser, like a GNOME or Mate desktop metapackage. By default, MX does not ship with anything that does, and you can uninstall all browsers. I do that as a matter of course in all my (now rarely used) MX build virtual machines. If you uninstall firefox-esr and still have whatever requires one of those two virtual packages, apt will install another browser that provides those.

Pale Moon provides only "x-ww-browser"--I'll update it to provide the other two with the next release.

[penguin]

You must have something installed that depends on virtual packages gnome-www-browser or www-browser, like a GNOME or Mate desktop metapackage. By default, MX does not ship with anything that does, and you can uninstall all browsers. I do that as a matter of course in all my (now rarely used) MX build virtual machines. If you uninstall firefox-esr and still have whatever requires one of those two virtual packages, apt will install another browser that provides those.

Pale Moon provides only "x-ww-browser"--I'll update it to provide the other two with the next release.

Stevo. MX Linux original iso comes with firefox installed by default. I do not recall exactly but times ago, I had the same problem ...maybe with Sparky Linux. I am not very sure. For the moment I resolved by locking/hold firefox-esr.

have a look:

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$ aptitude why-not firefox-esr
i   debreate         Recommends man-db          
p   man-db:i386      Provides   man-db          
p   man-db:i386      Suggests   www-browser:i386
p   firefox-esr:i386 Provides   www-browser:i386
p   firefox-esr:i386 Conflicts  firefox-esr     

$ apt-cache --installed rdepends firefox-esr
firefox-esr
Reverse Depends:
 |libreoffice-help-en-us

I do not see any package that needs firefox-esr. Maybe this necessity to have at last one browser installed comes from debian ?

[Stevo]

They would need one of the two virtual packages I listed above, not the actual firefox-esr package. Maybe you could search your installed packages in Synaptic for "metapackage" to see if you have any installed.

[Stevo]

I see Pale Moon 28.4.1 source was released a couple of hours ago, but I'm supposed to hold off on the packages until they announce it officially, which can take a day or so as they build their own packages. But I'll set up the build with those changes.

[eriefisher]

Yes, I'm bringing up this old post. Only because I just did a searched on this issue for a different installation and this thread came up. However, it's marked solved but no actual solution was posted. I found one though because of the info posted.

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 $ apt-cache --installed rdepends firefox-esr
firefox-esr
Reverse Depends:
 |libreoffice-help-en-us

Libreoffice-help-(lang) explicitly uses a names browser for it's help files.

Depends: fiefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium | firefox

Removing libreoffice-help-(lang) will let you remove firefox without installing another browser. If you do click on help in libreoffice you will get a notice about the package but also give you a button to view help online with a different browser, in my case Chrome, automagically. If libreoffice just depended on x-www-browser alone the problem would be solved.

[fehlix]

Any other way to stop MX Linux aka Debian to stop reintalling of firefox-esr my way to resolve this issue is the only one ?

Yes, we have a helper package for exactly this issue:

Allows firefox to be removed without replacing with another browser

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apt show libreoffice-firefox-compat
Package: libreoffice-firefox-compat
Version: 20.01.01
Priority: optional
Section: system
Maintainer: Dolphin Oracle <dolphinoracle@gmail.com>
Installed-Size: 7,168 B
Provides: firefox
Download-Size: 1,132 B
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://mirror.plusserver.com/mxlinux/mxlinux/mx/repo buster/main amd64 Packages
Description: libreoffice dummy compat package
 Allows firefox to be removed without replacing with another browser

[dolphin_oracle]

fehlix beat me too it...

I'll add the newer versions of libreoffice also now have an internal help viewer, but that's in test or backports right now, not stable.