Firefox snap and Plasma Browser Integration

[bendy]

Just did an in-place upgrade of a sacrificial laptop from 20.04 to 22.04, and tried the new snappy Firefox. Plasma browser integration seems to be broken.

Can also confirm that it is slower - very slow to cold start and a bit slow to warm start.

[rab0171610]

Yes it is. Sandboxed apps do not work well with the system and themes. For that reason, I install the Firefox binary to /opt and create a desktop file in /usr/share/applications per the instructions. Then to update Firefox, I got the the hamburger menu, click on help and it will look for updates and update automatically in the app. If you do this, you can then uninstall the snap version and everything will work as expected. Per https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...advanced-users

This article explains how to download and install Firefox on a Linux.

Table of Contents

• Install from your distribution package manager (Recommended)
• Install from Flatpak
• Install from Snap
• Install Firefox from Mozilla builds (For advanced users)

Install Firefox from Mozilla builds (For advanced users)

• Before you install Firefox, make sure that your computer has the required libraries installed. Missing libraries will cause Firefox to be inoperable.
• To install Firefox with this method, you must be able to login as root or execute sudo commands.
• This installation will have priority over the Firefox version installed through your package manager. To run the version installed with your package manager, you will need to execute the binary from a terminal. To do so in most distributions, open a terminal and type: /usr/bin/firefox.

1. Go to the Firefox download page and click on the Download Now button.

2. Open a terminal and go to the folder where your download has been saved. For example:

cd ~/Downloads

3. Extract the contents of the downloaded file by typing:

tar xjf firefox-*.tar.bz2

4. Move the uncompressed Firefox folder to /opt:

mv firefox /opt

5. Create a symlink to the Firefox executable:

ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox

6. Download a copy of the desktop file:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mo...irefox.desktop -P /usr/local/share/applications

Alternatively, if wget is not installed on your computer, go to the URL mentioned above, right-click on the page to open the contextual menu and select Save Page As. After you downloaded the file, move it to /usr/local/share/applications.

To verify that the installation was successful, you can open the Troubleshooting Information page. In the Application Basics section, the value of Application Binary should be /opt/firefox/firefox-bin.

Fyi, I did not have to install any additional libraries, but each system may be different. I already had some gtk apps and themes installed. It took me less than five minutes and I won't have to install Firefox again, rely on PPA's for updates, or slow/buggy snaps. As soon as an update is released upstream, it will update in the application.

Good Luck!

[bendy]

I know it's not the kubuntu team's fault, but it sucks that the integration between the default kubuntu desktop environment and default browser is broken by this "upgrade". What's next - Libreoffice, Thunderbird?

[Beerislife]

There are a couple of threads on how-to replace the Snap packages with proper ones:

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...-without-snapd

https://www.debugpoint.com/2022/04/remove-snap-ubuntu/

[acheron]

The integration is being fixed/worked on upstream, but sadly it did not land in time for the initial release of Jammy. Hopefully it will come fairly soon.

[Melcar]

I know it's not the kubuntu team's fault, but it sucks that the integration between the default kubuntu desktop environment and default browser is broken by this "upgrade". What's next - Libreoffice, Thunderbird?

My guess is that eventually many user space applications will be replaced by snaps. If that happens then I hope Canonical does a super effort to get system integration going (or maybe even the Kubuntu team). And fix the performace issues. Not a fan of snaps, but Canonical seems deadset on them (tho what they plan for snap gaming applications seems interesting). However, I probably won't stick around to see it as I may end up changing distros.

[bushcrafting]

The easiest way to get a proper install of Firefox is to just add the Ubuntuzilla Repository, of which include the latest release versions of Firefox, Firefox ESR, Thunderbird and Seamonkey. I tried to include the links and code to do it but was not allowed to, probably since I'm new and this is my first post here.

I tried it in a livesession of Kubuntu 22.04 (I haven't upgraded from 20.04 yet) and the Plasma Browser Integration works this way, but you have to search for it amongs the addons, no shortcut in the panel is added.