firefox lost or reset all its settings???

[M. Fioretti]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 16:25:08 PM +0100, Oliver Grawert wrote:

> well, unlike the update-manager, an installer dos not actuall know
> where you come from so it will explicitly not touch anythng and leave
> all data and config migration to you ...

yes, that's exactly what I wanted. And it DID work well. It only broke
after 4/5 days of usage, and I still don't know why.

Right now, it seems that I MAY have solved this, I hope, in the stupidest way:

1) rm -rf ~/snap

2) sudo apt remove firefox

3) sudo apt install firefox

and when I started the browser, I did see again all my saved logins,
history, toolbar and so on.

Now the only problems remain the ones that other users have reported,
namely a) clicking on links in a terminal window does NOT open them in
Firefox anymore, and b) download of files sometimes fails misteriously

> > About snap: First, it is beyond idiotic, and arrogant too, to clutter
> > home directories by creating normal folder or files for package
> > configuration data in plain sight, instead of hidden ones as any
> > decent project has done since the 1970s. Why "$HOME/snap" and not
> > "$HOME/.snap" is beyond me, really.
> 
> there is a simple technical reason, snaps run completely confined...

thanks for your explanation. I still fail to see how this can make
sense, or why anybody would CREATE, or imagine, problems like this:

> hiding that dir by default also means you can not easily access your
> downloaded file  or whatnot because you  can not see the  dir it was
> downloaded to...

if I download a file, I do it to reuse it with other applications, or
vice-versa, NEVER to keep it locked in some app-specific sandbox.

E.g. if I download a spreadsheet from my webmail or from a webpage, it
is to open and edit it with libreoffice, and then often send it
somewhere online, using the browser again. And those are all
activities that have always happened in $HOME, and are easy/quick if
all the files one has are in one visible place of his choice.

In other words, if the files first created or retrieved with an app
end up in a sandbox specific of that app, the whole thing becomes
unusable, one has to jump back and forth across sandboxes to do
anything useful.

If the files from different "sandboxed" apps all end up into the same
~/snap, what is the point of having snap anyway, instead of just keep
using $HOME, without cluttering it, and leaving the user her godgiven
right to organize her files as she, not developers, find best?

SHORTER VERSION: config and version data are one thing, USER FILES
are another. The two must not be mixed, if usability has any value.

But thanks, sincerely, for your detailed explanation. As a minimum, I
now know better than before what to rant about.

    Marco

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