Arch Linux

sharethewisdom

Member

Registered: 2014-09-22

Posts: 61

Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

question:

Which publicly available portable (from the Windows perspective) Firefox executable works the best from Wine on Arch Linux?

background info:

From 2005 until 2012 I heavily used portable Firefox installations on USB on many Windows machines. A portable Firefox truly seemed like the only solution to avoid bloatware browser plugins. I wanted to avoid having to dig the registry to find and destroy persistent threats and nuisances.

I used the vimperator addon and was able to automatically change non-standard absolute paths in the browser's config on every USB insertion to match the drive letter. That was only possible from 2009, when I switched from PortableApps to WinPenPack, which is configurable with an ini file!

It's thanks to Vimperator/Pentadactyl that I got to know and appreciate vim and I fell in love with the freedoms and the keyboard-driven possibilities in so many applications for GNU-linux.

Anyway, now I want to tailor such a USB key for someone, but I only have access to linux at the moment. I tried to run the most recent X-Firefox_68.0.2_win64_rev8.zip from WinPenPack in Wine (Xwayland), but it's broken. The menu's don't open, and browsing urls doesn't work. I probably can't run a VM because of limitations in the firmware of my laptop.

I could probably solve part of my problem (installing addons, etc) by just downgrading to the same Firefox version as XFirefox and pointing it to the profile directory on the mounted USB key.

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

You can download Linux versions from Mozilla's server:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Navigate into those folders until you get to the archive file for Linux, for example this one here:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rel … sr.tar.bz2

You can extract that archive and will find an executable inside. You can start that executable from within that location without having to install it. It's basically the same as the "portable" versions you used previously on Windows.

sharethewisdom

Member

Registered: 2014-09-22

Posts: 61

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

It's basically the same as the "portable" versions you used previously on Windows.

Is it cross-platform (Windows-Linux)? The goal here is to be able to use a portable browser primarily on Windows. But I need to be able to test/run and modify it on Linux. Which one would run best in Wine? and how?

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,321

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

You won't have any luck with that.
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. … &iId=36773
You could use one of the free VMs to test it (only the win10 image seems to be 64bit) https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/m … tools/vms/

Last edited by progandy (2019-08-25 17:24:15)

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sharethewisdom

Member

Registered: 2014-09-22

Posts: 61

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

ok too bad. thanks.

I can't currently run a VM because the kernel panics due to outdated CPU microcode/Libreboot ROM. I should really fix that.

I was also thinking of a custom wrapper Windows executable that detects the OS.

I haven't looked into this but Win10 now ships a linux kernel. What are the possibilities there? Maybe I could just use a simple shell script that detects the OS and launches a respective portable Firefox version. Does it have a framebuffer?

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,321

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

If you want a cross-platform stick, then you need to have two copies of some applications. Maybe you can use AppImages for the linux versions. I'm not sure how well sharing a firefox profile would work, though.
https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/Firefox

And I suggest you simply have two different launchers for windows and linux not some fancy detection script.
Edit: You probably have to create a second ext2/3/4 partition for linux anyways. Execute permissions for file on fat32 can only be given through mount options, I'm not sure about ntfs.

Last edited by progandy (2019-08-28 09:48:10)

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| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' | alias ENGLISH='LANG=C.UTF-8 ' |

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

Years ago, I used the same profile with both Windows and Linux versions of Firefox. I had the profile on a small FAT32 partition and shared those files with both my Windows and Linux installation.

Maybe try a similar set-up, where you use a portable Windows Firefox while in Windows, and a portable Linux Firefox while in Linux. Hopefully sharing the same profile still works with today's Firefox versions.

I don't remember how this was set up exactly. It's done somehow with the dialog window you get when you run "firefox -P". There's a way to point Firefox to where a profile's folder is located.

sharethewisdom

Member

Registered: 2014-09-22

Posts: 61

Re: Best coss-platform portable Firefox support?

Maybe try a similar set-up, where you use a portable Windows Firefox while in Windows, and a portable Linux Firefox while in Linux. Hopefully sharing the same profile still works with today's Firefox versions.

thanks for your suggestion. In fact, Winpenpack's open source x-launcher is a good example of proper file path management. Check out X-Firefox's ini file to get an idea: the launcher also wraps around firefox's configuration in the profile to change paths there as well. Following your idea: I think I'll need an x-launcher for Windows and one for Linux to match file path representation. It would be nice to create both launchers from a single source but I don't have much knowledge about cross compilation. Maybe the x-launcher AutoIt code could be trans-coded in Seed7 or Java?

Also I don't mind using mount options for execut'ability and I'll be storing the whole thing in a truecrypt volume using tcplay on exFAT which I'll probably be able to decrypt using Veracrypt in portable mode edit: oops didn't read about admin priv).

Last edited by sharethewisdom (2019-08-29 16:27:03)