Making firefox-kde-opensuse the default for Endeavour Plasma?

I don’t think that there are very many KDE apps installed by default in EndeavourOS on the contrary i think it’s just right. It’s hardly any compared to other KDE Plasma distros’s i’ve used. I use KDE Plasma on EndeavourOS and i also use Firefox. I like Firefox the way it is. If i wanted a customized browser i would install it. I would not want to see EndeavourOS changed in this way. If it’s not in the official repo it won’t happen IMHO but that’s just my thought on it. Not everyone is interested in pre-customized apps either.

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I don’t know what your problem is with the default Firefox on Plasma. I’ve been running it for the past 6-7 years and I have no issues with it.

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Which is the point I was making above. I dropped one distro cause of internal conflicts and simply too bloated, Dropped another distro cause they like to link apps that normally standalone.

Not saying that there are “too many” or “too few” just that Endeavour OS picks apps, and make choices so its not breaking canon to make another choice or at least acknowledge that there is a choice.

The issue with Firefox is that it doesn’t use the Qt filepicker which is a bummer since it has more choices for what to do, and better control over fileplacement as well as less DE integration.

I think the discussion isn’t about installing another browser any more - but a suggestion to improve the experience for the user by, as one example above: setting the file picker to a Qt one.

Me too. It’s the only browser i use.

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Me too its the only browser I use

I can’t swear to it but I do believe you are incorrect on this. If base Arch is anything like Ubuntu then Firefox comes with the OS before the devs here change a thing.

Then why are you asking for firefox-kde-opensuse? As i said i use default Mozilla Firefox.

Firefox doesn’t come preinstalled by Arch. Its a choice. Everything is a choice. To be honest I want to keep firefox, but I want to interoperability and experience to be slightly better so I use workarounds for the issues at hand. One of the suggestions was to change the desktopportal and that that works better which feels brilliant if it does.

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Just install a download manager and be done with it. Plenty of them out there. I use Xtreme Download Manager and it’s desktop companion app.

Oh the conversation have moved on from the initial suggestions which where unrealistic as the work would be too much. And firefox-kde-opensuse is Firefox but with an addendum - I simply think the experience can be improved for the user the issue is how would one get there without it being an insane task for the devs?

Being a massive Firefox fan thats the one I use? I just wanted to voice my support for it, just like you?

I don’t see why the choice have to be the GTK version, thats all. There is a choice - and of course I don’t if it was taken by intention or by inaction. Theres not anything wrong with either, my suggestion is just one to improve an experience for the user

For me personally its sorted out and I do it at every install - I simply fix it for myself. I just thought that this might be an area thats overlooked and could be improved and where I could bring some kind of valuable feedback to the endeavour OS team?

(tbh many seems very defensive and angry for some reason. I am by no means saying Firefox is bad, or Endeavour OS is bad or anything of that sort and if feedback is not wanted - thats A-ok I don’t want to tread on any toes. Theres nothing bad with having a clear definer between when feedback is wanted or unwanted. If its insulting or considered rude, I will obviously delete my thread. All love and respect from me)

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Not quite.
firefox-kde-opensuse is built with gcc (vanilla FF uses clang) and with a different build process, and it uses more system libs.

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I think from my perspective i don’t see it as improving the user experience. What has been done from the beginning since the start has worked. No one is defensive or angry on the contrary. I’m just saying that it probably won’t happen for a number of reasons which have already been pointed out. The biggest one is that it’s in the AUR and not the official repo. We have a number of users on KDE Plasma. You are the first to bring it up. Most users like the way EndeavourOS online install is setup and they customize it to their liking.

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Thats fair. :slight_smile:
(been eying your version but I use firefox sync quite extensively so may not be for me.)

Fair enough. Didn’t mean to insult.

What has been done from the beginning since the start has worked.

Also I can see that logic. Either way, if there is no interest in it, there is no interest in it. Thats life we all make different choices. I’ll mark this topic as solved as it seems its been gone through extensively.

First, please don’t take this the wrong way. Making suggestions is appreciated and I don’t think we are saying your suggestion is wrong but when you get into the implementation considerations, there are some challenges. Personally, I think it would be great to have plasma dialogs in Firefox.

However, lets look at some of the options:

  1. The default browser could be changed to a version that has been patched to support these dialogs. To me, this is a non-starter. Browser security is too important in this case and the distro should ship with the default firefox maintained by the Arch TUs. Additionally, it causes the issues in #3
  2. GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 could be set for Firefox. This would mean repackaging Firefox. It basically has all the same concerns as #1 and #3.
  3. A different browser could be shipped with each DE. There are several concerns I have with this:
    • It is more work for the devs on the ISO because it requires putting the browser selection in each DE section
    • Whatever browser is selected will likely cause angst among the existing community. In this case, I think only a majority would prefer Falkon to be shipped in place Firefox.
    • Shipping different browsers makes things more complicated from a documentation perspective. Shipping a single browser is something I used to campaign for constantly at Manjaro. The fact that every DE had a different browser made doing support and working on the Wiki a pain in certain cases.

Obviously, any of those things is possible but the question becomes are the side effects that those solutions bring better or worse than the problem which is that the default browser users gtk dialogs in plasma by default.

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One thing that could be easily included in the ISOs is a text-based browser like elinks.
This can be very useful if you have problems with Xorg.
Or is one already included?

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I always use Waterfox-current from AUR, and it has KDE integration, including KDE’s global menu out of the box. Lots of solutions in the toy box.

Yes. I remember using this on Manjaro, but I have completely forgotten about it (and, to be honest, haven’t even realised I was not using KDE dialogues in Firefox). So, after being reminded about it, I set GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 when running Firefox and I encountered some issues. I managed to get it working, but there are two things to point out:

First, both packages xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-kde have to be installed for this to work. EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma, for some reason, ships with only xdg-desktop-portal-kde installed. Thus xdg-desktop-portal has to be installed manually. Without it no dialogues work in Firefox and running it from the terminal gives the following error:

(firefox:21232): Gtk-WARNING **: 16:50:55.902: Can’t open portal file chooser: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop was not provided by any .service files

Second, this creates the old bug where Firefox cannot be set as the default browser. To avoid being nagged to set Firefox as the default browser, the simplest solution is to disable that check.

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