I'm in the process of seeing if i can install a zoom client on my debian 10 system.
There's a deb file for it, zoom_amd64.deb, but i would like to see if i can do it using the gui: in firefox, when i click on the download link, i get a little window that says "What should Firefox do with this file?"
Instead of just choosing "Save File", i'm trying to go with the "Open with" flow.
The application listed to open the file is "Discover".
If i click "Open" in the firefox window, Discover comes up, and offers several options, including an offer to "Update" 185 of my packages. But when i click on 'Update All" to get the packages updated, i get the message "You have no authorization to execute this operation. Failed to obtain authentication."
That of course is reasonable, because no user level program should just be able to update the system unless the user is a sudoer and has been authenticated. However, the Discover program does not give me a chance to authenticate myself, and further, the error message pop-up window disappears after just a few seconds.
Naturally, i do
not want to run Firefox as root in order to elevate Discover's
privileges, and i don't know if that would be sufficient anyway (because
Firefox would be reasonable to lower the privs of any children it forks off).
Now, it is possible to directly run Discover (which is plasma-discover) as root, and actually update packages, but when i do, i get the message "Running as root is unnecessary and discouraged".
So . . . what's the right way to approach this, so that the app does what i want it to without generating warnings (and ideally, works directly from Firefox rather than having to be invoked separately)?
TIA for any info or advice! :)
dan