How do I run Basilisk on Linux? Topic is solved

[Mæstro]

I have downloaded the tarball from the official site and extracted it in my home directory, but I do not know how to run it. Executing run-mozilla.sh does nothing. I am a layman who happens to use Linux and would like to try Basilisk as a secondary browser. Could somebody please give me a non-technical list of steps to run Basilisk from the directory?

[gabrgv]

Just run the file basilisk (or basilisk-bin) instead.

[gabrgv]

If you want a system wide installation^*, you can follow these steps:

My suggestion for system wide installation:
* extract the tar archive to either something like /opt/basilisk or /home/youruser/bin/basilisk
* ensure your user will have proper filesystem permissions on the directory Basilisk is in (chown -R $(id -u):$(id -g) /path/to/basilisk)
* extract the .desktop file from either the RPM or the AUR packages
* modify the file paths in the .desktop file to point to /path/to/basilisk
* profit

1. The extract part you already did.

2. This permission thing you can achieve by right-clicking the basilisk file > Properties > Permissions > Allow executing file as program . (This will vary according to the file manager you are using.)

3. Here is the .desktop file from AUR he mentioned. Right-click the page, click “Save page as…”, and put it in ~/.local/share/applications/ .

4. Open the basilisk.desktop file you just saved (it’s a plain text file), look for instances of “Exec=basilisk […]” and change it to “Exec=/path/to/basilisk […]”.


*. It won’t be a system wide installation if you follow the steps I gave, it’ll install just for your user.

[Mæstro]

Just run the file basilisk (or basilisk-bin) instead.

How do I run it? If I click on either in my file manager (Nemo), I am told it is an ‘unknown file type’. There is no option in the drop-down when right-clicking on either to run them.

[gabrgv]

How do I run it?

Try right-clicking > Properties > Permissions > Allow executing file as program.

[Mæstro]

How do I run it?

Try right-clicking > Properties > Permissions > Allow executing file as program.

That box was already ticked from the start. The interface still appears as described.

[gabrgv]

I am told it is an ‘unknown file type’

This may be a bug in Nemo.

Anyway, I don’t have Nemo installed but I think it has an ‘open in terminal’ option when you right-click inside a directory, right? If so, enter the Basilisk directory, right-click in it, choose ‘open in terminal’, and type ‘./basilisk’ in the terminal window and hit enter.

By the way, how did you install Pale Moon?

[Mæstro]

Yes, now this worked! Moreover, you jogged my memory in a way that answers your question.

By the way, how did you install Pale Moon?

I had used Cinnamon’s menu editor to create a shortcut to open Pale Moon without using the terminal, and put a copy of this shortcut in my taskbar and desktop. Since then, I forgot how to do that, prompting my initial post, but I have now created such a shortcut for Basilisk also. Thank you!

[Basilisk-Dev]

Some older/LTS distributions see Position Independent Executables as shared libraries instead of binaries because their MIME type detection is obsolete.

Please see the first entry in the FAQ.

Also see this forum topic.

[Mæstro]

Please see the first entry in the FAQ.

Indeed, I am using an ELTS distribution, as my signature shows. I would like politely to suggest revising the FAQ entry to account for lay users such as myself who have no idea how to create a shell script or desktop file, had no idea how to run it from the terminal without being told and find the discussion in the linked board post rather too technical to understand.