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Firefox-GTK—Day 43© Copyright Darrell Anderson. After I installed a new menu item for Firefox in the KDE menu, I later realized the change was user-specific only. This seems goofy to me. Why doesn’t the KDE menu editor provide a “system” level option to edit the menu on a global basis? Eventually I figured out the basic menu structure, although I am far from being a subject matter expert. However, seems the only way to provide global menu changes is to manually edit the global configuration file. This is the same rant that I have had for such a long time whenever I argue that GNU/Linux is not ready for prime time. By design, GNU/Linux is a multi-user system. Seems to me that all software should be designed with that in mind. I know the command line zealots could care less, but the KDE menu editor needs to provide a way to provide global menu changes. I have had a very frustrating time installing Firefox. Firefox is not ready for prime time. Do not try to convince me otherwise. Firefox is ready only for hobbyists and techies. Firefox is not ready for typical home users nor for the enterprise multi-user environment. Consider what I went through to get Firefox installed. Duplicating Firefox profiles is challenging and futile. Apparently most or all of the RDF files are hard-coded to each user’s directory. I suppose one could perform a search-and-replace with an editor and then perhaps everything might copy easily. Nonetheless, browse the discussion forums and one discovers that Firefox does not well support the networking/multi-user environment. Again, GNU/Linux is a multi-user environment! How could the Firefox developers not design Firefox for that environment? Even Windows (NT4, 2000, and XP) supports a multi-user environment. Regardless, in a multi-user environment, every user must manually install extensions. That’s nuts. I discovered no way to install extensions globally. I recall with previous versions of Phoenix/Firebird that extensions could be installed globally. From what I see of the main Firefox directory structure, that process seems to still exist, but the extension manager provides no way to perform a global installation. I have no idea how to manually edit RDF files either because I don’t yet understand the structure and syntax. I hate wasting resources like this. I am a strong advocate of single-source methods. The problem is not disk space but the idea that each configuration must be maintained separately. Too much overhead. This is the same problem with the KDE menu editor. This is bullheaded and wrong. After I realized that on my test box Firefox ran fine as mortal user, I returned to my primary box to begin the slow process of troubleshooting. As I had discovered from some surfing, I started Firefox from a command line so I could watch for error messages. I kept seeing “loading the extensions datasource.” Over and over, repeating and repeating. Back to the web. I used Mozilla. I found no explanations but I found one discussion where the users all rendered the extensions directory in the main firefox directory as read-write for all users. That’s nuts. This is not how the ’nix multi-user model works. Nonetheless, I changed the directory permissions. I had installed Firefox to /opt/firefox. Firefox loaded without complaint. Finally I could save preferences changes. I then looked in the /opt/firefox/extensions directory. I noticed that several files now existed that had not existed previously. Curious, I then changed the directory permissions back to 755 with root ownership. I then ran Firefox. No problems. Thus, I had solved my problem on my primary box. I am reasonably certain how this all happened. The foundation of my problem was assuming that Firefox fully supports the multi-user environment and that I could copy configuration files. When I installed Firefox on my primary box, I did not perform a full installation. I copied the Firefox directory and my user configuration files to my primary box using my spare FAT32 hard drive. When I ran Firefox as root, I already had a preconfigured user directory and I had changed the theme to Qute. Thus, for whatever reason, when I ran Firefox as root, Firefox never properly updated or configured the /opt/firefox/extensions directory. I am unsure why this was necessary or did not happen, but I noticed in many discussion threads with people having problems installing Firefox that they had to run Firefox once as root before they could run as a mortal user. The main Firefox web site alludes to this peculiarity too, although no detailed explanation is available. I then probably compounded my problem when I deleted the /opt/firefox directory and performed a fresh installation. Again, with root preconfigured to use Qute instead of the default theme, Firefox never updated the /opt/firefox/extensions directory. Thus, when I ran Firefox as mortal user, Firefox had no default theme to use and coughed. After I had resolved this mystery, I then repeated the nonsense manual process of installing all of my extensions again for my mortal user account. I also had to tweak several extension configurations, as well as install toolbar icons from the Customization tool. To add insult to this frustratingly slow and awkward process, I could not initially get the Sound Extension working so I copied the configuration files from root. I had to do a lot of editing to change everything. In the end everything works. In all, what originally I had thought would take me only a couple of hours instead took me the equivalent of a day and half in fiddling, surfing, exploring, tweaking, and editing. Bah! I like Firefox. Understand that. Also understand that Firefox is not ready for prime time. Don’t argue with me. Remove the blinders and stop singing with the crowd. Firefox is not even close to usurping Internet Explorer. Only the hobbyist and techie has any hope of confronting this usability problem. The typical user will not try or care to try. I cannot imagine any IT administrator installing Firefox like this dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of time. The Firefox developers have some serious work to do to make Firefox ready for prime time. This is the kind of nonsense that motivates ridicule from non GNU/Linux users. Firefox needs to support the following:
Both GNU/Linux and Windows today support multi-user environments. The Firefox developers have no excuse. I do not apologize for sounding exhausted and cranky. I am. Finis. |
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