From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.1) Gecko/20031114 Description of problem: /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc checks for netscape available, which has been depricated long time ago. Nowadays this should be mozilla I think... Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xinitrc-3.35-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Install Fedora Core 1 with X Actual Results: /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc checks for /usr/bin/netscape Expected Results: /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc checking for /usr/bin/mozilla
It also might be a good idea to have shell env. var. BROWSER to let new browsers like firefox override mozilla and so on... I think http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/ was the firs place I saw it, butI see it here too - http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO/runningx.html (with example script). Well... this is just a thought, I can not live without mozilla anyway :)
I saw some requests for FireFox in FC3. At least one of them was to have FireFox as default web browser (which I disagree, it is stripped down mozilla with some features missing). Having this in mind I think /etc/profile.d/browser.{sh,csh} that 'export's BROWSER can resolve this problem too. On the other hand, to make this work many programs will have to be modified to honor this variable (mail clients, KDE, Gnome)...
We already have a mechanism for selecting the default web browser, and a mechanism for using the default - gnome-open gnome-open <URL> That will open the default web browser, which is mozilla in our default configuration, however it can be changed if desired. I'll update xinitrc to use that instead, as it's more future-proof. The entire OS already uses this pretty much, so no applications need to be modified in this case.
KDE does not have such mechanism AFAIK (or it does?). I know Gnome is the default desktop manager, but many users, like me, do not use it. Don't get me wrong, I used Gnome before, but I prefer KDE. > gnome-open <URL> Will this work in text console (no X, this is probably another story about something like BROWSER_TEXT...)? I hope gnome-open can easily use $BROWSER too. KDE uses such behavior when you setup your proxy - it can use {http,ftp,no}_proxy environment variables when you select 'Use preset environment variables' in konqueror's proxy settings. I wish 'Component Chooser' had such option to select the browser, but that's another story... Probably this should be fixed upstream in KDE/Gnome? My idea was it would be nice if the user can setup his/her favorite browser once and everything uses it. As long as many applications (aspell, cvs) do use environment variables I hope this is a good idea.
PS: I fear this discussion (about $BROWSER) does not fully belong here, maybe this should be RFE (but xinitrc still has something to do with it)? The script xinitrc can be be fixed to refer to mozilla without these but...
* Thu Sep 24 2004 Mike A. Harris <mharris> 4.0.5-1 - fvwm2ectomy, and netscapectomy (#123284) Setting status to "RAWHIDE"