I installed firefox in the /usr/local directory and created a link to firefox in the /usr/bin directory
If i click on the firefox progam directly it will load. But when i type firefox in the terminal i get this

/usr/bin/firefox: line 1: [Desktop: command not found
/usr/bin/firefox: line 17: X-DCOP-ServiceType=: command not found
/usr/bin/firefox: line 18: X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false: command not found
/usr/bin/firefox: line 19: X-KDE-Username=: command not found

Any ideas what the problem is?


ash:~ # whereis firefox
firefox: /usr/bin/firefox /usr/local/firefox

/usr/bin/firefox is probably a desktop shortcut that the shell is trying to interpret as shell commands.

Based on the prompt, it looks as though you're running your xterm as root, or you've su'd to root. If either is the case, you either need to allow root to access your desktop, or you need to run it from the shell using your own credentials.

To put it more simply: it's a security thing protecting your desktop from other users. Remember: the *nix security philosophy stems from its multiuser heritage, and the approach that most distributions take is paranoia - lock everything down securely out of the box.