Firefox dynamic content problems, and how to uninstall Firefox in Ubuntu

rose_bud4201 · 11-04-2007, 11:53 AM

I've recently changed from Slackware to Ubuntu, and in doing so I didn't reformat my /home partition. Firefox, therefore, worked with all my existing bookmarks, addons, etc right from the start. However, I've got a weird problem - flash applications and some other dynamic content just don't work correctly. Embedded flash players will constantly reload and ... shake from side to side about an eighth of an inch, is the best way that I can describe it. It's not actively harmful that I can tell, but it does make using or watching anything flash-related incredibly distracting.

The search box here at LQ doesn't work either - it'll load for a fraction of a second, and then disappear again as if I had clicked somewhere else on the page.

My first instinct is to try to uninstall and reinstall Firefox, but when I try, I get this:

Code:

[503:laura@cleopatra ~]$ sudo apt-get remove firefox
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  firefox firefox-gnome-support gnome-user-guide ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-docs yelp
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 to remove and 15 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 83.4MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

I don't really want to uninstall half my system in the process of reinstalling my web browser.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Junior Hacker · 11-05-2007, 10:38 PM

Most user customization settings are in your home directory. But not flash and any other Mozilla plug-ins. In order for the operating system to apply customizations involving these plug-ins, the plug-ins need to be installed and reconfigured in the newer OS.
Normally it is a bad idea to use the same user from one OS to another, some say you should adjust the user ID number to be the same as the previous installed OS that the user settings in ~ were derived from, but you also have to make sure you have the same version of the application installed.
I found out the hard way (similar to your case), that it is best to create a new user in the later OS and just access the files in the previous installation's user directory as root if necessary. Some customization files can be used from one to the other, but more often than not, they give quirky results.