How do I get rid of "Portal"

Support and Help
1

How do I get rid of “Portal”? A few days ago, something called “Portal” keeps popping up every time I try to open a PDF file. My PDF application is Studio Pro 2023. My OS is Ubuntu Unity 24.10. I have been a long-time user of Studio Pro software. Yes, my OS is supposedly set to open PDF files with Studio Prop 2023.

Thank you,

John

3

How was the PDF application installed, snap or flatpak?

It is possible that this could be a misconfigured xdg-desktop-portal, a framework that helps sandboxed apps (especially Flatpak and Snap) communicate with the desktop — e.g., for file access, printing, etc.

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4

@lauterba , how are you opening these PDF files? Also, can you describe this 'something called “Portal” ’ in more detail, or maybe provide a screenshot?

What makes you think there might be malicious activity involved in this specific case?

Linux AV scanners like ClamAV are typically geared more toward scanning for Windows malware, which for the most part can’t infect a Linux system. Also, based on reading the old Ubuntu Forums, it seems Linux malwares typically try to be stealthy and go out of their way to conceal their presence, so:

  • Presenting as popping up something weird or opening the wrong application would be highly unusual;
  • Scanning a possibly-infected system from the possibly-infected system cannot produce a meaningful result, because the malware would subvert the scanner to make it not report detecting the malware.

The use of malware scanners on Linux is for an uninfected Linux system to scan individual non-system files for mostly Windows malware, generally for prior to passing those files to a more-trusted environment or another system.

The way to deal with a reasonable suspicion of malware infection is to completely erase the system and reinstall from scratch from known-clean install media - which might fix OP’s issue regardless, but if OP is not dealing with malware this would likely be overly drastic.