Firefox as default browser in Fedora

[Warren Togami]

> In the interest of disclosure, I've worked on the Visual Identity team
> responsible for the new Firefox logo (and more stuff to come). I'm not
> making money on it, but I am involved in Firefox.
>

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=50876
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=366523#366523
On the topic of the Firefox logo, this is some seemingly unhappy news. 
The logo however is unrelated to your question.

> I would like to see Firefox included as the default web browser on Fedora.

https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1272
The first hurdle will be eventual official inclusion into Fedora.  The
first step in reaching that goal would be to make the Firefox 0.8
submitted package at fedora.us of the highest quality now.  Could you
serve as an active liason with upstream developers in order to help this
process?

I personally use and really love Firebird and now Firefox, but there are a
few realistic hurdles, mostly technical to make this a possibility.  Read
below.

>
> I know the discussion about including Mozilla Firebird has been had
> several times over here on the fedora-devel-list. The general consensus
> I was able to garner from searching the archives seems to be something
> like this:
>
>
>> “There are already too many browsers in Fedora”
> This is certainly true. I don't think anyone would advocate adding
> another browser without dropping one of the existing browsers. Mozilla
> 'classic' would be the prime candidate. That said, I would hate to see
> necessities to keep Mozilla prevent a strong browser from getting in.
>

Blizzard mentioned that the lack of automatic importing is a blocker for
inclusion of both Firebird and Thunderbird.

I personally see the current poor situation of xremote clashes, broken
xremote functions (while Thunderbird is running), and poor dekstop
integration (actually launching the right user-chosen Preferred
Application) globally as hurdles.  I personally use a bunch of ugly hacks
in my personal FC desktop in order to make all the applications work
together.

The xremote problems make it extremely problematic to use Firefox, while
keeping the regular Mozilla suite as the mail client.  Some users really
want to keep it this way.  The lack of automatic importing makes it
difficult to quickly switch to the Firefox/Thunderbird combo.  That combo
does work well with ugly script hacks that avoid the broken xremote
functions.

>
>> “Mozilla is required for other apps”
> There didn't seem to be any confirmation of this, but there was
> speculation that some other apps in Fedora may depend on Mozilla
> libraries.
>
> For example, Karl DeBisschop said of replacing Mozilla with Firefox,
> still called firebird at the time
> (http://redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2003-December/msg00295.html):
>> Can't speak for others, but I'd take that trade. It's probably not
>> really practical, however, because epiphany (and galeon2) both depend
>> on the libs from mozilla classic, so ath that point why would you not
>> have the browser since you already had the libs. Or could galeon and
>> epiphany be made to run on the Firebird libs?
>
> Can anyone clarify this? It looks to me that Epiphany does require
> Mozilla - but nothing else seems to.
>

gaim and other GPL applications that need SSL capability are unable to use
OpenSSL due to GPL incompatibility.  As a result gaim has the option of
linking against mozilla-nss or gnutls.  gnutls is not shipped in the
distribution (something about code quality?), so gaim currently needs
mozilla-nss.  I think fedora.us ships something that uses mozilla-nss too,
but I cannot remember off the top of my head.  I suppose it may be
possible to link gaim to Firefox, but I don't know if anyone has tried.

I heard something about openoffice using a mozilla component for
*something*, but I don't know the details there.  Can anyone confirm?

>
>> “The Mozilla suite is is more complete”
> Well, Firefox can certainly replace the browser component of Mozilla
> (Navigator). I'm not sure if Thunderbird is ready to be included as a
> mail client – but then again, Evolution is already in there and with
> it's move into Gnome, is clearly a strong default. Also, ChatZilla can
> be installed on top of Firefox as an XPI.

I personally use Firefox and Thunderbird every day.  IMHO both clients are
ready, but it is impossible to use Firefox if you are unable to stop using
the old mozilla suite.  The poor behavior of xremote is just such a
hassle.  And again the lack of automatic import...

https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1113
Thunderbird 0.5 at fedora.us
It seems a terrible situation that the upstream "official" tarball was
broken (contained CRLF's) with the first two attempts.  Anyone know if
they fixed this yet?
Please help us polish the supporting scripts of Thunderbird so we can
finally release this into fedora.us Extras.  Please also give opinions
about the package name.

Ignore my comments around #45.  Yes I was full of crack.  See this report
below for my proposed solution to go into the official mozilla-1.6 update
and firefox /usr/bin startup scripts.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=114524
This fix workarounds the broken xremote functions, enough to make mozilla
somewhat usable while Thunderbird is running.  Firefox should be fully
usable when properly configured.  Reviews of this fix are needed.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com