Default Fault

[Oeconomist]

I clicked on a link in an e.mail massage (presented by my handler); Pale Moon was launched by default (as it should have been); it reported that it were not(!) my default browser, and asked me if I wanted to make it so.

(I said yes, and left the check in the box for testing with each launch.)

I Use Pale Moon 25.8.1 (Atom) for Linux; my distro is Fedora Core 22.

[Oeconomist]

Hmmm…. It did it again.

[Jazoray]

I'm not sure if the "make palemoon the default browser" even does anything. And it shouldn't, because a browser runs unprivileged.

try using the system settings of your respective desktop environment to set it to default.

have you set up the default programs/preferred applications/MIME type associations for your desktop environment?

[Oeconomist]

It already is the system default. (That's why it launched when I clicked on a link in my e.mail; I've not set a distinct browser choice in my e.mail handler.) The problem is that it checked to see whether it were the system default, and somehow decided that it were not,and so asked me (again) whether to make it so.

[Moonchild]

Since this is Linux, I don't know the details on how to go about this, but you may have to use your system control panel to make Pale Moon default for all protocols it supports (if this is not the case, it will tell you). If there is a rights issue that it can't update these settings, then it will continue to ask unless you tell it to stop checking to see if it is the default browser.

[Toa-Nuva]

I've always found the default browser detection in Linux kinda wonky - in other browsers as well, not just in Pale Moon. I usually just disable the automatic default browser check. But I just got curious and started investigating...

And ... this may sound bonkers, but ... It turns out that when I start Pale Moon by clicking on a link in Thunderbird, Pale Moon seems to think it is Thunderbird. So it thinks it is not the default browsers, because the default browser is Pale Moon, not Thunderbird. And when I click on the "make PM the default browser" button, it will actually set Thunderbird as the default web browser.

(Using Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon x64, by the way.)

EDIT: I cannot reproduce this in Firefox and Chromium, though. I do remember that I had similar problems with their default browser detection in the past, but that may have had a different cause, or they fixed it at some point.

[Moonchild]

And ... this may sound bonkers, but ... It turns out that when I start Pale Moon by clicking on a link in Thunderbird, Pale Moon seems to think it is Thunderbird.

That makes absolutely no sense at all.

[Toa-Nuva]

My thoughts exactly. But I can say for sure that:
- PM opened via Thunderbird does not recognize that it is set as default browser, even though PM is set as the default browser.
- When I click the "set PM as default browser" button in a PM instance that was opened via Thunderbird, Thunderbird is set as the default browser instead. (I checked via "preferred applications" in my system settings.)

I'd guess there is something wrong with how Pale Moon identifies itself when it tries to check or set the default browser. (Because apart from that default browser thing, everything else still seems to work as normal.)

[Moonchild]

I think this is something else. I think it has to do with how Linux process hierarchy works -- it seems that Pale Moon is being launched by Thunderbird not as a separate program, but rather as a child process similar to a "worker thread" for e.g. a web server.
Maybe some Linux gurus can chime in here, because I wouldn't now if this is a problem with Thunderbird and the way it launches Pale Moon, or a problem with Pale Moon not escaping the process chain, or maybe even something specific to flavors of Linux, nor do I have an idea how to work around this...

[Oeconomist]

On my system, 64-bit Fedora Core 22 with the Xfce shell, launching Pale Moon directly from the shell and then selecting that it be set as the default browser had no effect on the Xfce Preferred Applications settings, but silenced the the prompt when Pale Moon was launched directly from the shell, and caused Pale Moon to be the browser launched by Thunderbird. However, when Pale Moon was launched by Thunderbird, the prompt returned, and selecting that Pale Moon be the default browser still had no effect on the Preferred Applications settings. (Thunderbird was not set at the default browser.) Setting Pale Moon as the default browser amongst the Xfce Preferred Applications settings did not change the results of launching from Thunderbird, but caused the prompt to return when Pale Moon was launched directly from the shell. Again then selecting Pale Moon as the default browser caused the prompt to be silenced when Pale Moon was thereafter launched from the shell.

This is a minor but very curious bug (or set of bugs) in something!

[half-moon]

It must be a bug with Fedora. I honestly wouldn't touch that garbage with a mile long stick.

[Oeconomist]

Toa-Nuva reports somewhat similar problems in Linux Mint (which is based on Debian, rather than on Fedora). One might hypothesize two independent but parallel sets of bugs, but that's quite unlikely.

[Toa-Nuva]

On my system, 64-bit Fedora Core 22 with the Xfce shell, launching Pale Moon directly from the shell and then selecting that it be set as the default browser had no effect on the Xfce Preferred Applications settings, but silenced the the prompt when Pale Moon was launched directly from the shell, and caused Pale Moon to be the browser launched by Thunderbird. However, when Pale Moon was launched by Thunderbird, the prompt returned, and selecting that Pale Moon be the default browser still had no effect on the Preferred Applications settings. (Thunderbird was not set at the default browser.) Setting Pale Moon as the default browser amongst the Xfce Preferred Applications settings did not change the results of launching from Thunderbird, but caused the prompt to return when Pale Moon was launched directly from the shell. Again then selecting Pale Moon as the default browser caused the prompt to be silenced when Pale Moon was thereafter launched from the shell.

When you checked the preferred applications, did you make sure that the data you are shown is up-to-date? The GUI tool in Linux Mint / Cinnamon that shows the preferred application does not update its information unless I actually open a new instance of the tool. Maybe it's similar in Fedora / Xfce? That might explain why you thought the default browser did not change, even though Pale Moon did change its behavior.

[Oeconomist]

Good question, and the answer was that I shut down the settings tool between checks, so it should have been up-to-date.

[Oeconomist]

Experimentation shows that when Firefox makes itself the default browser on my system, the settings showing by the Xfce Application Settings are completely unaffected. It seems that nearly everything is just ignoring those in favor of some other configuration information.