Running the Firefox Flatpak (Flathub) starts the system Firefox instead

Ask Fedora
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1

When I start the Flatpak installed version of Firefox, it instead runs the “system” (i.e. RPM packaged) Firefox instead:

❯ flatpak run --verbose org.mozilla.firefox                                    
F: No installations directory in /etc/flatpak/installations.d. Skipping
F: Opening system flatpak installation at path /var/lib/flatpak
F: Opening user flatpak installation at path /home/kemra102/.local/share/flatpak
F: Opening user flatpak installation at path /home/kemra102/.local/share/flatpak
F: Opening system flatpak installation at path /var/lib/flatpak
F: Skipping parental controls check for app/org.mozilla.firefox/x86_64/stable since parental controls are disabled globally
F: Opening user flatpak installation at path /home/kemra102/.local/share/flatpak
F: Opening system flatpak installation at path /var/lib/flatpak
F: /var/lib/flatpak/runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/21.08/c7252386179c4c1ecf5d93bdaec6ca82852dddfdae7112b5c3177f7424c4a928/files/lib32 does not exist
F: Cleaning up unused container id 3566457131
F: Cleaning up per-app-ID state for org.mozilla.firefox
F: Allocated instance id 3530338018
F: Add defaults in dir /org/mozilla/firefox/
F: Add locks in dir /org/mozilla/firefox/
F: Allowing wayland access
F: Allowing pulseaudio access
F: Pulseaudio user configuration file '/home/kemra102/.config/pulse/client.conf': Error opening file /home/kemra102/.config/pulse/client.conf: No such file or directory
F: CUPS configuration file '/home/kemra102/.cups/client.conf': Error opening file /home/kemra102/.cups/client.conf: No such file or directory
F: Running 'bwrap --args 39 xdg-dbus-proxy --args=41'
F: Running 'bwrap --args 39 firefox'

I can tell this is the case because when I navigate to Help -> About Firefox it has the following version info:

104.0.1 (64-bit)
Mozilla Firefox for Fedora
fedora - 1.0

The system is Running Fedora KDE 36 with Wayland. No amount of reinstalling the Firefox Flatpak has any effect. I’ve seen another old post here about this issue but that seems to be about making it run on wayland by allowing it the wayland socket permission in Flatpak, but that seems to be the default these days.

It’d be great to figure out what’s going on here so I can get both Firefox installs running side by side so I can figure out if I can move to the sandboxed version without losing any needed features.

2

Doesn’t Fedora also package a flatpak version of Firefox? Are you sure it isn’t that?

Check the remote on that flatpak.

3 Likes
3

When I reinstalled earlier today I was very careful to install the Flatpak from Flathub and not the one from Fedora.

4

You should be able to verify which is installed with dnf list installed firefox and flatpak list | grep -i fire

[The latter is not tested since I do not have the flatpak installed]

5 
❯ dnf list installed firefox
Installed Packages
firefox.x86_64                                                            104.0.1-1.fc36                                                            @updates

❯ flatpak info org.mozilla.firefox

Firefox - Fast, Private & Safe Web Browser

          ID: org.mozilla.firefox
         Ref: app/org.mozilla.firefox/x86_64/stable
        Arch: x86_64
      Branch: stable
     Version: 104.0.2
     License: MPL-2.0
      Origin: flathub
  Collection: org.flathub.Stable
Installation: system
   Installed: 244.0 MB
     Runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/21.08
         Sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk/x86_64/21.08

      Commit: 58d464a82c396e6478da87096ff5501779b1fcc48ae2ec4dc431876f84bd5f35
      Parent: 65ae211f6202210bf22267f39997416f7e79e5691c7f052c0d339e110b9b5847
     Subject: Export org.mozilla.firefox
        Date: 2022-09-06 12:35:56 +0000
6

Make sure when you start the second instance of firefox you start with --new-instance.

If firefox is already open it uses the already running profile.

7

That does work, and it’s OK for me but it’s not a very good UX. Starting the Flatpak version and getting the RPM version still seems unexpected to me.

8

Uninstall the included Firefox and then reinstall the Firefox Flatpüak version. Make sure that you have selected under KDE-settings → standard application the right Firefox format.