I do maintain a snap the Firefox snap might be able to easily utilize for smart card reading:
I know some Belgian customers use it on Ubuntu Core based IoT Health Kiosks with the Belgian ID. There is also an example snap that shows how to utilize it, Firefox would just need to copy the plugs definition and the libpcsclite blocks into its snapcraft.yaml from
(youād have to install the pcscd-daemon snap alongside on your machines and manually connect the interfaces, but it should give you the desired functionality)
When chromium packaged as snap I donāt care because is not the default browser,
but now it Firefox the default browser I use most
snap has issue with Arabic support we discuses it year ago without fix
it is the snap package donāt use the host fontconfig and it render ugly font for Arabic that make it hard to read in HDPI screens
from Ubuntu 19.10 and above Ubuntu use Noto Sans Arabic for render arabic character and it great but snaps still use DejaVu
Firefox does not use these desktop launchers but instead uses the gnome-3-38 extension.
Have you tried if it is probably already fixed there ? (you can install/remove the Firefox snap alongside the deb, it wont affect the deb install (just run it with snap run firefox while the deb version is not running)). If it does not, you should make sure it gets fixed in the extension.
I did a test of the Firefox snap on Kubuntu Impish and was positively suprised that the theming integration worked, at least under X11.
What currently does not work is the Plasma Integration extension, which seems to be tracked under #1741074 (@paulw2u already pointed to this bug). This worries me a bit, since this is a feature I really like and e.g. using the Firefox flatpak is currently no alternative since it seems to suffer from the same problem.
Reading over that, it sounds like at this point the setuid helper is a fallback for cases where using unprivileged namespaces to set up the sandbox fails. Itās also possible to build without the helper, in which case Chromium will fail to start if the unprivileged namespace option fails.
So itād definitely be worth checking whether the Chrome based browsers actually ever use their setuid helper. If they do, it probably means we are blocking something that would let them use the less privileged alternative.
There are only seven snap names with automated review policy overrides allowing them to ship a binary that looks like the Chrome sandbox helper:
Outside of Canonical managed snaps, it looks to just be Opera and Skype. So it isnāt out of the question that the CAP_SYS_ADMIN bits could be removed at some point. That might be preferable to having Firefox and Chrome specific policy variants in browser-support.
I hope that in the new Firefox you will fix that horrible big line spacing in the bookmarks!
I already see a Firefox snap 92.0.3 in the repository. Will the new be the same?
it might still change (i.e. build against a core22 base and use newer desktop launchers) before 22.04 but you should definitely be able to test and use it today already from the stable channel to report any rough edges you find ā¦
@ogra
I did set refresh-app-awareness=true with snap manager extension. I checked just now the value and thatās ātrueā.
Well, gnome 3.38 snap updated while Firefox was running aaaaaand FF crashed.
So does this snap option avoid updates of dependencies of running snaps too?
i got an automatic update of the 3-38 extension here with a bunch of electron apps open that use it and i donāt see crashes or any other ill effects with these apps ā¦
looks like firefox could be more fragile to this ā¦
i am pretty sure it does not make any difference whether you update manually or if it is automatic, the process is the same on a technical level, only the trigger for it differs ā¦
Trying to run google earth: https://earth.google.com/web/ i have the messages:
Unfortunately your computer does not support WebGL graphics acceleration; Google Earth cannot be loaded
Hmm. While your browser seems to support WebGL, it is disabled or unavailable. If possible, please ensure that you are running the latest drivers for your video card.
On the same installation of Ubuntu Impish with Firefox .deb google earth works fine
That would be a great addition for the browser snaps!
I was guessing though, how could OpenSC fit in there? Would it have to be in the form of another snap?
Every single Belgian needs this functionality in order to do basic stuff like:
File their taxes
Read communication from the government
Check their medical history
Register for a (covid) vaccine
Rent stuff from the government
etc.
It is vital that this issue is fixed before phasing out the Firefox deb package. With the Chromium apt package gone, there will be no alternative in the Ubuntu repositories to do these basic things in Belgium.
Itās really nice that our government is supporting Ubuntu using open-source software using common standards and APIs. Breaking this vital functionality looks like a big middle-finger to them.
Tried running the firefox snap on impish. It started a brand new profile and couldnāt see the existing profile to import bookmarks/settings/etc. I can manually copy files over from ~/.mozilla to ~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla but are these supposed to seamlessly transition?
Additionally, screen sharing through pipewire (tested on google meet) appears not to do anything.
