Iceweasel goes 3.0 too

Debian's "Iceweasel" build of Firefox 3.0 is out. Working fine for me so far with one exception.

"There was an error launching the default action command associated with this location."

If you install Iceweasel 3.0 and get this error trying to open a URL from gnome-terminal or some other GNOME app, it looks like the answer is that Iceweasel 3.0 doesn't have a program called /usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox.

For an answer, look to the explanation at defindit.com. Both Debian and GNOME havetheir own ideas of how and where to set the user's preferred web browser, and you need to go in and set the GNOME preference in the XML files under

.gconf/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http

and

.gconf/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http

I'm just setting it to "iceweasel" without the pathname.

Yes, it would be nice if Debian could ship Firefox-brand Firefox, but it can't happen. The Microsoft Windows software world is too full of sneaky people on both sides of the law who would release spyware-infected Firefox builds, or "Firefox" installers full of marketing crapware. So the Mozilla Corporation needs the power of trademark law to, at least, kick spyware mongers' ads out of Google and get their sites taken down. We're going to see more of this kind of stuff when the same project finds itself releasing code both for downstream Linux distributions and for the sometimes-shady world of Windows "Freeware."

Syndicated 2008-06-19 17:00:27 from dmarti's blog