I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
what browser they have.
BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
browsers, no statistics to be found.

On 11/19/23 21:37, Woozy Song wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

I can see a non-trivial chance that Firefox isn't installed.

> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.

I suspect that the union of no Firefox and having Chromium is quite recent.

> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

I think that Firefox has effectively been /the/ web browser on Linux for
the last two decades.

There are and have been other options. But almost all of them have been
in addition to Firefox.

Maybe you'll find a web browser as part of the Desktop Environment; KDE
/ GNOME, without Firefox. But I suspect that's a minority.

There's a reasonable chance that there may have been a text mode browser
installed when Firefox wasn't installed. But I suspect that's more
along the lines of is X11 used or not than anything else.

IMHO Firefox, and Netscape before it, has been the defacto web browser
for Linux and Unix at large for the last quarter century.

Grant. . . .

Woozy wrote:

> Subject: do most (desktop) linux have Firefox as standard?

Yes.

--
Mike Easter

On 20/11/2023 04.37, Woozy Song wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

xdg-open <url>

Most desktop comes with that one installed, it will then open the
browser the user has as the default browser. If the command is missing,
then you can start to think of finding a specific browser.

--
//Aho

Am 20.11.2023 um 11:37:44 Uhr schrieb Woozy Song:

> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find
> out what browser they have.

Use x-www-browser to open a browser. It will open the browser that is
selected via the alternative system.

On 20/11/2023 09.37, Marco Moock wrote:
> Am 20.11.2023 um 11:37:44 Uhr schrieb Woozy Song:
>
>> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
>> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
>> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find
>> out what browser they have.
>
> Use x-www-browser to open a browser. It will open the browser that is
> selected via the alternative system.

And then you limited to the debian family.

--
//Aho

On 2023-11-20 04:37, Woozy Song wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.
> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

There is a way to ask the desktop to open the default browser.

Aho has mentioned this:

xdg-open - opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application

There may be others.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

Am 20.11.2023 um 10:35:12 Uhr schrieb J.O. Aho:

> And then you limited to the debian family.

How do other distributions handle a browser call?
xdg-open?

On Mon, 20 Nov 2023 11:37:44 +0800, Woozy Song wrote:

> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.

This problem has a number of alternate solutions:

The "Free Desktop" (freedesktop.org) people provide a utility
(xdg-open(1)) that will open the user's preferred browser, assuming that
the user's desktop follows the freedesktop.org standard, and that the user
has configured the desktop's "preferred browser" option.

Older standards provide for the BROWSER environment variable to contain
the path to the user's "preferred browser", assuming that the user (or
sysadmin) has set this envvar in the execution environment.

Even older, many programs provide a configuration setting for the user's
preferred browser, again assuming that the user has set the value in the
configuration.

FWIW, programmitically "guessing" the browser value is not a good idea;
it may not be possible to do, and a bad guess (such as guessing the
/wrong/ browser out of a list of installed browsers) can turn a user
off to your application.

> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

Probably because, even though some browsers /try/ to keep usage
statistics by causing the browser to ping home ever time it is used,
many users disable that pingback. And, the pingbacks that make it
through are considered, by the browser authors, as "privileged
information" related to their own estimate of market share, etc.

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Whether or not Firefox is the most common, it's the only option worth
supporting, because it's the only browser that fully implements the web
that isn't Chromium-based.

--

On 11/20/2023 4:17 PM, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
>
>
> Whether or not Firefox is the most common, it's the only option worth
> supporting, because it's the only browser that fully implements the web
> that isn't Chromium-based.

There is Seamonkey, which is a suite likely originally based on
Netscape Communicator. It has a web browser. As well as an HTML editor.

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/releases/2.53.17.1/linux-x86_64/en-US/seamonkey-2.53.17.1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

That was released on September 20, 2023.

https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/

That's similar to Firefox, but without quantum.

You can unpack the folder and run it as a portable item. You
are responsible for making a .desktop file, or for including
the executable in your PATH.

Paul

On 20/11/2023 20.18, Marco Moock wrote:
> Am 20.11.2023 um 10:35:12 Uhr schrieb J.O. Aho:
>
>> And then you limited to the debian family.
>
> How do other distributions handle a browser call?
> xdg-open?

It's more or less the standard and it seems the at work ubuntu I have
also has it installed.

--
//Aho

Am 20.11.2023 um 22:40:09 Uhr schrieb Paul:

> That's similar to Firefox, but without quantum.

IIRC it isn't anymore since FF went another way with the Quantum (and
successors) stuff.

On 11/21/2023 3:28 AM, Marco Moock wrote:
> Am 20.11.2023 um 22:40:09 Uhr schrieb Paul:
>
>> That's similar to Firefox, but without quantum.
>
> IIRC it isn't anymore since FF went another way with the Quantum (and
> successors) stuff.
>

Seamonkey only runs one process (which makes it "non-Quantum"). .

Modern Firefox runs seven processes or so (Quantum version, task isolation).
On Linux, you might even find labels for the
function of each process. I don't think the
info is as easy to get on Windows.

On Firefox, you might (in "top") see a process listed as "Isolated Web Container" instead
of the word "Firefox" as you might see in Windows Task Manager. Firefox uses
seven processes, so if a movie player process dies, the browser itself can
recover and continue from the loss of a child process.

Paul

Am 21.11.2023 um 07:01:07 Uhr schrieb Paul:

> Seamonkey only runs one process (which makes it "non-Quantum"). .

I don't think this is the only difference.

SM uses FF91 as backend according to the User-Agent header.

On Tue, 21 Nov 2023 10:18:09 -0500, David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Nov 2023 02:19:46 -0500, J.O. Aho <user@example.net> wrote:
>> On 20/11/2023 20.18, Marco Moock wrote:
>>> Am 20.11.2023 um 10:35:12 Uhr schrieb J.O. Aho:
>>>
>>>> And then you limited to the debian family.
>>>
>>> How do other distributions handle a browser call?
>>> xdg-open?
>>
>> It's more or less the standard and it seems the at work ubuntu I have
>> also has it installed.
[snip]
> Rather then try to satisfy all linux users, simply make xdg-utils a
> requirement.

I'd suggest going another way: give the application a run-time
configuration option that defaults to xdg-utils, but can be overridden
by the user to specify the browser to use.

This way, the application defaults to using xdg-utils to launch the
user's "desktop preferred" browser, but allows the user to specify
an alternate, should xdg-utils not be installed.

Just my 2 cents worth
--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

On 2023-11-20, Woozy Song <suzyw0ng@outlook.com> wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

xdg_open filename.html

> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.
> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

Good!

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні

On 2023-11-21 13:01, Paul wrote:
> On 11/21/2023 3:28 AM, Marco Moock wrote:
>> Am 20.11.2023 um 22:40:09 Uhr schrieb Paul:
>>
>>> That's similar to Firefox, but without quantum.
>>
>> IIRC it isn't anymore since FF went another way with the Quantum (and
>> successors) stuff.
>>
>
> Seamonkey only runs one process (which makes it "non-Quantum"). .
>
> Modern Firefox runs seven processes or so (Quantum version, task isolation).
> On Linux, you might even find labels for the
> function of each process. I don't think the
> info is as easy to get on Windows.
>
> On Firefox, you might (in "top") see a process listed as "Isolated Web Container" instead
> of the word "Firefox" as you might see in Windows Task Manager. Firefox uses
> seven processes, so if a movie player process dies, the browser itself can
> recover and continue from the loss of a child process.

Sometimes (in Linux) when I notice that the processor is more loaded
than usual, I run "top" in a terminal and see some firefox child process
taking way more cpu than the rest. Unless I am doing something specific
in the browser, I kill that busy process from "top". Then I look at
firefox, and there is a tab that says something like "Gahhh! Some
process died. you can click to restart it". Then I decide if I want to
restart it, or leave it there. It can be a youtube tab, or an amazon
tab, or something.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 11/22/23 05:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Sometimes (in Linux) when I notice that the processor is more loaded
> than usual, I run "top" in a terminal and see some firefox child process
> taking way more cpu than the rest. Unless I am doing something specific
> in the browser, I kill that busy process from "top". Then I look at
> firefox, and there is a tab that says something like "Gahhh! Some
> process died. you can click to restart it". Then I decide if I want to
> restart it, or leave it there. It can be a youtube tab, or an amazon
> tab, or something.

I think that's a relatively new capability when compared to Firefox's
long existence. I remember when Firefox was a single process, so doing
that would have killed everything Firefox was doing and closed the program.

Having the ability to do what you describe is nice. :-)

On 2023-11-22 15:28, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 11/22/23 05:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> Sometimes (in Linux) when I notice that the processor is more loaded
>> than usual, I run "top" in a terminal and see some firefox child
>> process taking way more cpu than the rest. Unless I am doing something
>> specific in the browser, I kill that busy process from "top". Then I
>> look at firefox, and there is a tab that says something like "Gahhh!
>> Some process died. you can click to restart it". Then I decide if I
>> want to restart it, or leave it there. It can be a youtube tab, or an
>> amazon tab, or something.
>
> I think that's a relatively new capability when compared to Firefox's
> long existence.  I remember when Firefox was a single process, so doing
> that would have killed everything Firefox was doing and closed the program.
>
> Having the ability to do what you describe is nice.  :-)

Relatively new... somewhat, but I have already forgotten when it was a
single process or thread.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 22/11/2023 15.28, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 11/22/23 05:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> Sometimes (in Linux) when I notice that the processor is more loaded
>> than usual, I run "top" in a terminal and see some firefox child
>> process taking way more cpu than the rest. Unless I am doing something
>> specific in the browser, I kill that busy process from "top". Then I
>> look at firefox, and there is a tab that says something like "Gahhh!
>> Some process died. you can click to restart it". Then I decide if I
>> want to restart it, or leave it there. It can be a youtube tab, or an
>> amazon tab, or something.
>
> I think that's a relatively new capability when compared to Firefox's
> long existence.  I remember when Firefox was a single process, so doing
> that would have killed everything Firefox was doing and closed the program.
>
> Having the ability to do what you describe is nice.  :-)

Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
ones too.

--
//Aho

On 11/22/23 09:23, J.O. Aho wrote:
> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
> ones too.

Nice!

Today I learned.

Do you by chance know how to do similar in Thunderbird?

Grant. . . .

J.O. Aho wrote:

> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
> ones too.

Aye, dammit! Why had never i known of such a thing 'til now‽

--

On 2023-11-22 23:25, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
> J.O. Aho wrote:
>
>> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
>> ones too.
>
> Aye, dammit! Why had never i known of such a thing 'til now‽

I think it is recent. Some other browser had this years ago, and then FF
added it too.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 22/11/2023 17.37, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 11/22/23 09:23, J.O. Aho wrote:
>> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
>> ones too.
>
> Nice!
>
> Today I learned.
>
> Do you by chance know how to do similar in Thunderbird?

I'm not aware of a task manager that shows processes in Thunderbird and
if you search you will get mostly about tasks you plan in a "task manager".

In Firefox there is a menu option for the task manager "More Tools/Task
Manager", while Thunderbird do lack a such menu option as far as I can see.

--
//Aho