I wanted to ask this for a long time since it is fairly annoying. Fedora has its own flatpak firefox yet it decides to incorporate the browser to the base image, making it difficult to replace or overshadow with its flathub counterpart. If the flatpak is inferior or not suitable for use in Atomic Desktops, why does it exist and if it is not, why it is included with the base image?
This tracker issue might give you some answers on why Firefox is still in the base image on Fedora atomic desktops.
FWIW, Firefox from the base image can be hidden from the GUI, for the purpose of installing a Flatpak version (either from Fedora’s remote, or from Flathub).
I am Atomic user and I use
rpm-ostree override remove firefox-langpacks firefox
to remove Firefox. I don’t know why people never mention this solution and always tell people to “hide it from the GUI” but the option is there if you want to remove it fully.
I do that as well on some of my systems, but I don’t recommend it as such, given that override removing packages should not be a long-term solution[1], which in this case it is.
From rpm-ostree’s man page (override subcommand section):
Such modifications should be done with care and are normally not intended to be long-lasting.
Changes in dependencies can cause upgrade issues. ↩︎
This can all simply be avoided when Firefox would be installed as a Fedora flatpak. This gives the user freedom to work with this one, or if needed/wanted replace this flatpak with a Flathub flatpak.
Hiding it from the GUI still means it is still installed as part of the base image, uses disk space, gets updated but is not being used.
Correct. But override remove-ing a package from the base install still downloads the chunks including Firefox with the new image, and the removal of the specific packages only takes place locally, which in turn increases the update time. So no gain in updates, maybe some in disk space usage (if relevant).
Just to quickly say, the issue tracker has moved over to Fedora Forge now and can be seen here: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/tracker/issues/3
It’s about an application I do not trust being included in the base image and the fact that only option I am given is to hide it from the GUI and pretend it doesn’t exist.
It’s Windows & Edge all over again.
I do not trust Mozilla, I do not care how many “killswithes” they put in their software and the fact that my Fedora experience is directly tied to another company that is not Fedora/RedHat is worrying.
This is a bad decision being insisted upon by Fedora people and I hope they reconsider it at some point. Until then, override remove it is.
Please read at least the title comment in https://forge.fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/tracker/issues/3. We want to remove it from the base image but we can not do it on a whim, we need a transition for our existing users or they will “loose” their browser and settings.
Contributions to make that happen are welcomed.
I am a bit confused on why Fedora needs to provide a smooth transition since I do not believe that Fedora conducts itself as a beginner-friendly/oriented distro, if it did, we would have had the proprietary codecs/nvidia drivers right out of the install.
Also, there are multiple pathways the user can take when they realize that they are missing their browser after an upgrade.
- They can roll-back and research what is going on…
- They can install any browser from Discover or Gnome Software Center and figure out what to do next.
- They can re-layer firefox into their machine to preserve their old data (since user data is stored on .moziila dir and modifying the image should not affect this)
I agree with bluesadam 100%, while including firefox by default on regular fedora means that you are just giving them a browser to use, including it on Fedora Atomic means that you are installing it as a system browser with no easy way to remove (in accordance with how a Atomic distro should ideally be used), giving it the same position as MS Edge or Safari.
I have often wondered about the presence of FF in the core image and a solution to cleaning up and potentially optimizing the core img. This (your solution) nails it. Many thanks!!!
This is not true for Fedora in general and we do want the Fedora Atomic Desktops to be a good experience for any user, beginner or not.
Fedora does not include proprietary software: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/license-approval/#_overview
- Rollbacks are there for bugs. This would be a known change.
- Newly installed Flatpak’ed browsers would not have the settings and data from the Firefox on the host.
- Similarly to rollbacks, we do not expect users to layer packages to get basic functionality working.
I do not understand what are you claiming with this part of the response, you oppose a supported viewpoint (the belief that fedora is not beginner friendly) by just stating the opposite, without providing any justification as I did while supporting my claim. And I do not understand why you have left a link to the documentation for me stating the fact that fedora does not support proprietary drivers or codecs. I respect fedora’s decision of being 100% open source; however, you cannot achieve a beginner friendly distro with such approach since some important things do not work when you are 100% open source; and, fedora does not provide a easy way to setup the proprietary stuff, making it not beginner friendly in my opinion. While it is not as demanding as Arch or Gentoo, there are other distros that make handling this stuff so much easier.
I guess I have not been that clear about the message I am trying to convey, hence, let me try to restate it in a more direct fashion. I think that Fedora is a distro that is demanding enough to expect its average user to deal with this change, especially considering that this update will not cause data loss (just data not being accessible with the new firefox) and there are multiple ways to resolve the problems or setbacks caused by the update. I have listed some on my earlier post. I believe that an average Fedora user should be able to run a singular terminal command, instead of Fedora trying to engineer a complex transition phase, which can cause more problems down the line. Also I believe that this change is great for making the system as modular as possible considering the fact that Fedora already installs other desktop apps like Okular as its flatpak version for Kinoite.
In addition, this is not the first change fedora has introduced that has caused disruptions for the average user, one recent example that comes to mind is the removal of Fuse 2 libraries on fedora 44 Atomic , it broke a lot of appimages for me. While I understand that this has been done for security reasons, the impact is certainly the same to this change and since the average user was expected to deal with it, it can be expected for us to deal with this as well.
Have you considered creating your own, customized Atomic image which doesn’t include Firefox? Since you’re obviously not an “average user,” that shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
There are even tools that help with that:
Fedora Atomic: A simple guide to creating a custom, local bootc image
I’m guessing there are other methods/tools for doing so out there as well. The above were just the first three results in a DuckDuckGo search for “Fedora atomic create new image.”
I’m sure that if there’s enough interest such custom images would be very popular.
That’s what open source/libre software is all about. Don’t like how those Fedora packagers are scheming with Mozilla to further [whatever evil plot those Mozillans want to unleash on the world – perhaps just as innocent dupes – or perhaps not]? You can save us all!
You have the power to do so. I suggest you use it.
I expect that it would take less time and effort to create a Mozilla-free (don’t forget about Thunderbird. Those folks probably put that in the default image too!) Atomic image than it would take to successfully lobby the packagers to do so for everyone else.
Whether you create your own image(s) or convince the packagers to change the default image, I wish you luck and success in all your endeavors!
While I do not know why you replied to my post in this manner; but, most of your reply was about me, not the arguments I put forth, I will assume the best due to your last wishes on the post, which I do appreciate.
I do not know why you have quoted “average user”. I have never used that phrase on this topic and have never claimed that I am more experienced then any of you. In terms of it being a big deal, yes it is a very big deal since it involves a lot of hard work which I do not have the time for. The entire reason of me using Atomic is so that I would have to do as less maintenance as possible. I would rather go through the raute of a regular distro instead of creating my own Atomic base since it will be for me and using Atomic tech would be just extra steps in that case.
Yes, this is the case for Ublue projects which include Firefox as a flatpak, and some would say that they are fairly popular. I do not want to switch to it since Fedora Atomic feels way simpler.
I am not sure what you think that I was implying in this topic; but, I am not against Firefox being a base package on Atomic because it is Firefox, I am against it because it is a browser and it can be run from a flatpak. I would made a similar request if it was chrome, edge, brave, floorp, zen, or any other browser. Also, no, they do not ship thunderbird with Atomic.
What’s wrong with Firefox?
It seems to me very good point. I would also prefer firefox not to be preinstalled in Atomic OS’es. Firefox have security issues and it would be better to install it from flatpack.
Ublue also have nicer, system monitor I wonder why Fedora not updating to it as well?
P.S. It would be better if Atomic OS’es had better preinstalled thumbnail generators for Blender, RAW images etc.
Removing Firefox from the base image isn’t a very good idea. Fedora already has major compatibility issues, particularly with graphics drivers. You know, the 80% of PCs on the planet that run on Nvidia and need hardware decoding?
The criticism published by Distrowatch about Fedora is still valid: “As usual, Fedora feels like an operating system which was assembled by separate committees who were not allowed to talk with each other.” And that’s exactly what Neal Gompa said about kernel support. Nobody cares about problems that have already been documented. A few years ago, the Linux philosophy was KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). There’s no point in looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
It just seems very easy to do, or is it not?
Feel free to have a look at the issue tracker to see what is blocking it for being removed at the moment and help out if you can.