Pale Moon does not start on Kubuntu 25.04 Topic is solved

[PaleAle]

Operating system: Kubuntu 25.04
Browser version: Pale Moon 33.8
32-bit or 64-bit browser?: 64
Problem URL: All
Browser theme (if not default):
Installed add-ons: none
Installed plugins: (about:plugins): none

If possible, please include the output of help->troubleshooting information (as text):

**PASTE troubleshooting information here**

Pale Moon refused to start after I upgraded my OS Kubuntu from 24.10 to 25.05. I thought it might be some weird upgrade problem so I did a clean install from the ISO provided at kubuntu.org and downloaded Pale Moon 33.8 Linux 64-bit GTK3 Europe. I unpacked the tarball on the still empty new system and tried to start the browser, nothing happened.

Now what?

[Moonchild]

First off, try launching it from the terminal and see if there are any messages thrown there.

[PaleAle]

I did try that already, the result was weird. It says "palemoon: Befehl nicht gefunden."

In english that is "Command not found". The file does exist, of course. I also checked if it's executable, sure is.

[Moonchild]

Oh. hm, and you're trying to start it from the directory palemoon is in?...
I'm going to have to yield to some Linux people here to help you more; I'm not the best to troubleshoot what seems to be (file)system difficulties.

[mmouse]

@PaleAle

I take it that it displays the same error message when you specify the full path to launch it from command line, right ?

Something like

/opt/palemoon/palemoon

with the directory looking like that:

ls -lart /opt/palemoon
total 102180
(...)
-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 192144 juil. 2 21:32 palemoon-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 192144 juil. 2 21:32 palemoon

if yes, could you try to post the result of

ldd <path/to/palemoon>

(in the previous case, it would be
ldd /opt/palemoon/palemoon)

[PaleAle]

Including the path gave a different result.

/opt/palemoon/palemoon
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /opt/palemoon/libxul.so:
libdbus-glib-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM.


ls -lart /opt/palemoon
total 103176

-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 188048 Jun 27 05:57 palemoon-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 188048 Jun 27 05:57 palemoon


ldd /opt/palemoon/palemoon:

linux-vdso.so.1 (0x0000734d9d03f000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x0000734d9d016000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x0000734d9d011000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x0000734d9cc00000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x0000734d9cf1a000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x0000734d9ceed000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x0000734d9c800000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x0000734d9d041000)

[mmouse]

@Paleale

in this case ldd /opt/palemoon/libxul.so should display the missing library.
Maybe it's not installed by default anymore.
Well as we know what it is could you try to run

sudo apt install libdbus-glib-1-2

[PaleAle]

sudo apt install libdbus-glib-1-2 did it. Seems Kubuntu 25.04 got rid of that one.

Thanks a lot!

[Sessh]

I was actually just going to come here to say I can't even install it on the latest Kubuntu. I used the "kannegieser" way to do it successfully on the latest Mint version some time ago, but when I try to use the same method for Kubuntu, I get unresolvable dependency issues for:
libvcodec58, libvcodec-extra58, libvcodec59, libvocdec-extra59, libvcodec60, libvcodec-extra60

It says all of these are uninstallable on Kubuntu plucky trying to install on an old laptop with the sse-gtk3 version. I tried a few other methods elsewhere and even the zipped programs you download from the main Pale Moon site, but that crashes right away I assume because this laptop doesn't support avx. This system does have libvcodec61 which comes with ffmpeg.

If this is deserving of it's own thread, I will start one. I was unsure if I should do that or add to this thread. Both amount to the same thing; PM not working on 25.04 Kubuntu.

[Moonchild]

If your distribution is extremely picky and overbearing about which versions of libraries can be installed, then that's more of an issue with the distro than with Pale Moon.
We are working on FFmpeg 7 support (which comes with libavcodec 61 support) but it's not yet ready. You should be able to install libavcodec 60/ffmpeg 6.x to work around this. If your distro demands you not install that, then you are prevented from using Pale Moon until we have this support.

[Sessh]

I will try that next time I'm on the laptop. As far as I understand, libvcodec58 and 59 have been dropped from 24.04. I will try installing ffmpeg6 next chance I get and see if that works.

[Sessh]

I'm still pretty green with Linux, but it looks like there is no ffmpeg6 available for plucky (it lacks a Release file), so I will just have to wait for libavcodec61 to be implemented.

[Veit Kannegieser]

I have updated on a test machine from Debian 12.11 "bookworm" to 13.0 "trixie" today.
Pale Moon works here since libavcodec59, libavutil57, libjxl0.7 etc dependencies were already installed.
On fresh installs the apt sources configuration of bookworm would needed to be added for now.
Trixie only provides libavcodec61 and libavutil59.
Perhaps similar workaround is possible for Ubuntu?