Fedora 23~25 Might Switch Away From Firefox

[Awesomeness]

Epiphany as the default? No problem:

# cd /usr/local
# wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/33.1.1/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-33.1.1.tar.bz2
# tar xvjf firefox-33.1.1.tar.bz2
# ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
# firefox

That's stupid.
Firefox stays in Fedora's repos.

[droidhacker]

Epiphany as the default? No problem:

# cd /usr/local
# wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/33.1.1/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-33.1.1.tar.bz2
# tar xvjf firefox-33.1.1.tar.bz2
# ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
# firefox

and:

# yum remove epiphany

Should take about 30 seconds total.

The meaning of "default" in this context, is simply "what is automatically selected during installation" and "what is installed on livecds". Nothing else.
In other words, the solution you are looking for is actually as simple as "yum -y install firefox". That's ALL.

[cocklover]

I've never seen this in my life, even on live disks but no live disk image I have has anything newer than last Spring. My main OS is very heavily secured against any unintended connections, however.

First things first: Make sure your homepage isn't Google, Youtube, or anything containing 3ed party content from Google! That's all it would take to load a Google cookie every time. If you still get the cookie with a homepage set to about:blank, trash your .mozilla directory and start clean with no services you may have enabled and forgotten about. Close and reopen, look for that cookie. If it's not showing up, begin configuring the browser, re-checking as you go like you would for any other problem or bug.

Obviously you have something auto-connecting to Google. I don't use any online browser services and disable them all, so I have no idea which one it is. An earlier post suggests that "safe browsing" is the culprit, so open preferences, go to "security" and uncheck "block reported attack sites," and "block reported web forgeries" which I'm pretty sure use Google's database. Having done this, do NOT bank or shop online with credit cards, an unsafe practice no matter what you do but especially dangerous when anti-phishing/anti-forgery databases cannot be used. If you still get that Google cookie, go to about:config and disable any other "safe browsing" items.

If you screw up in about:config and firefox won't work, trash your .mozilla directory again and start over. I KNOW you can stop this cookie because I've never had it.

I finded this

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6301114/how-pref-cookie-google-com-appears-in-firefox

[Luke]

Deleting all cookies and blocking 3ed party seems to stop its return

I finded this

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6...ars-in-firefox

Apparently this is a hardcoded cookie that cannot be separately deleted, but deleting ALL cookies removes it and at least if 3ed party cookies are disabled it does not return. I just tested this with my special hardened .mozilla directory moved to .mozilla_BAK so a new default directory would be made. The PREFS cookie from google.com appeared, even though google.com is blocked in my /etc/hosts, I wonder if it is simply written by mozilla into the new cookies.sqlite database. Apparently deleting all cookies deletes that database and forces a new one to be made from scratch.

The stackoverflow post warns that you must toss all your cookies to get rid of PREFS, I don't see why that would be a problem as long as people know to do so. If you use persistant cookies, you have already thrown away any hope of privacy. It also seems to me that the natural reaction to a failed individual cookie deletion would be to escalate by deleting all cookies, which would work.

With my security settings I had to intentionally run the browser on a new .mozilla directory to see and test this cookie but for the sake of working from live disks I am glad to know about this bug. I probably would have blamed the Mozilla start page, cleared all cookies like I would anyway, thus never noticed it was persistant because it does not survive removing all cookies. For Mozilla to design it to resist being individually cleared should be considered dangerous, however. Perhaps they should have the cookie clearing dialog state that this cookie can only be removed by removing all cookies. They claim they coded it this way so that Google themselves could only read it for use of the safebrowsing database and not to connect it to people's Google accounts. For that to be true requires Mozilla to defeat Google in a hacking war, something I would not want to bet on.