Re: Fwd: Re: I think Firefox is crashing my system
On Sun 17 Aug 2025 at 14:05:03 (-0700), David Christensen wrote:
> On 8/17/25 06:28, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 23:00:29 -0700, David Christensen wrote:
> > > # apt-get purge firefox-esr
> >
> > Since the goal is to reinstall firefox-esr shortly afterward, we don't
> > really want to remove anything that depends on firefox-esr, such as
> > a desktop environment metapackage. Even worse, a metapackage that
> > has a line like "Depends: firefox-esr | other-browser" might bring in
> > some other browser we don't want. So, this command might be better:
> >
> > dpkg --purge --force-depends firefox-esr
>
> If `apt-get purge firefox-esr` purges up the desktop or other packages
> would should be precursors, that would be a serious bug.
If I understand your terminology, then I don't understand where the
serious bug is. My firefox-esr is a dependency of firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb,
and when setting up the system, installing firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb
pulled in firefox-esr.
But libreoffice-help-en-gb also depends on a browser, and I made sure
to install it after firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb so that it didn't pull in
some other browser.¹
So if I remove firefox-esr, APT will dutifully install
epiphany-browser² and any of its dependencies that are lacking.
Not what we want.
> But, the fact that you mention it is disturbing. Please feel free to
> test and post the results.
>
> If `apt-get purge firefox-esr` purges dependencies, then the sysadmin
> would need to reinstall them after reinstalling firefox-esr.
It would be odd for APT to remove dependencies, but they could become
susceptible to autoremoval during this process. However, it's unlikely
for a sysadmin to issue such a command at this time.
¹ actually unnecessary, because firefox-esr happens to be the first
browser listed in the dependency alternatives.
² epiphany-browser is next in the list.
Cheers,
David.
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