Mastodawn

James "Jim" Ed Randson Apr 3

@lina Gladly it won't happen to my sister's laptop which installed Fedora Atomic. What happened?

@jimedrand For some people the homepage reverts to Fedora Home after every update (or most updates?). And nobody knows why. And everyone who sees it thinks it's intentional or happens to everyone. It is not and it does not.

This has been going on for years now, because the people who experience it think Fedora is doing something on purpose/wrong to cause it and suggest incorrect solutions, and the people who maintain the package can never reproduce it, and nobody has ever sat down to figure out WTF is actually going on.

James "Jim" Ed Randson Apr 3

@lina I see. Well, I hope it would be fixed soon.

soc Apr 3

@jimedrand @lina Might be related to Firefox not being able to restore tabs since forever on Linux?

(hic/haec/hoc)Apr 3

@soc @jimedrand @lina uh what? I use Firefox on Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora and I've never had a problem restoring tabs

James "Jim" Ed Randson Apr 3

@_hic_haec_hoc @soc @lina Meanwhile in openSUSE sometimes had a same problem but now fixed. But for Fedora, I have no idea about the details.

Vince (biometrically enrolled)Apr 3

@lina not sure if it's related, but I've noticed that it always asks to be set as the default browser even if it already is. And setting it as default from its own dialog (rather than the DE's settings) makes its icon disappear. I'll see if other fedora users are experiencing or have reported the same problem.
Both could be related to fedora's default config for firefox.

Pavle Apr 3

@vincep @lina I've experienced this as well.

@pavled @vincep It could be related since this is also a pref thing... I suspect the real issue is a more general problem with lost preferences.

But what I really want to track down is "what" happens on updates specifically to cause weird breakage with the home page.

Vincent Tunru 4d ago

@pavled @vincep @lina

Are you two using the Flatpak? Because if so, you might be running into the following bug, which supposedly is about to be or has just been fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1911246

1911246 - [Flatpak] Firefox keeps asking to set it as the default browser, even after doing so

RESOLVED (iholmes) in Firefox - Shell Integration. Last updated 2026-03-25.

Pavle 4d ago

@VincentTunru @vincep @lina That might actually be it. I went back and checked and I did actually switch to the Flatpak version at some point (because codecs), so it's more likely this. Disregard me then.

Vince (biometrically enrolled)4d ago

@VincentTunru @pavled @lina nope, using the fedora package here.

Colgrave Apr 3

@lina Glad u are getting a crack on this. I almost forgot this bug existed after setup my own user.js

@colgrave Can you reproduce if you remove it?

Colgrave Apr 3

@lina ill give a try later. haven't run updates for days anyways

Where should i send the logs

@colgrave If you can find something interesting in the logs that would be great, but otherwise we need a way to reproduce repeatably. That probably means, make a copy of your config directory before the update, update, confirm the problem happened, then restore the copy and confirm the problem still happens (and the pref is reset).

Then we'd have to start poking around what's special about that setup. If we can reduce the config dir to something that can be safely shared and repros the issue that would be nice.

I'm happy to work with you over chat (Matrix/Discord/whatever) if you're okay with that.

Radek Průša Apr 3

@lina Thank you for giving this attention. I had this happen a bunch of times when I was trying to daily Fedora and Asahi. The entire homepage and all my bookmarks would get replaced by the default ones.

At one point, the Fedora defaults replaced my saved tabs in Firefox sync, which made me loose all my bookmarks. That made me switch away from Fedora on my desktop, and stop using Asahi on my laptop, since the ARM Firefox Flatpak wasn't available yet.

Radek Průša Apr 3

@lina I don't know exactly when this happened, but I'd put it at about late 2024 to early 2025.

Really glad to see you trying to get down to the bottom of this, since it made me turn away from Asahi, and Fedora as a whole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/azgugt/i_lost_all_my_bookmarks_because_of_firefox_sync/

@prusa Did you restore a backup?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks

Honestly that sounds like another Firefox Sync bug, like the home page issue... but there's more issues than that.

Recover lost or missing Bookmarks | Firefox Help

If your bookmarks have disappeared, it may be possible to recover them. Learn why bookmarks may seem to be missing and how to get them back.

@lina I didn't know about backups back then. From what I remember, I started my desktop system up after an update, and opened Firefox.

When I opened Firefox, all my bookmarks were replaced with the default Fedora ones, and the homepage reset to the default Fedora one.

When I opened my laptop running macOS to do what I was about to do on my desktop system with Fedora, I realized that the changes from my desktop already propagated to all my devices with Firefox sync.

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!Apr 4

@prusa Yeah, there's something going on that resets preferences after upgrades it seems... and nobody has figured out how to reproduce it...

@lina I tried to stop it from reoccurring by removing all the Fedora-specific defaults from the file that controlls the defaults, and setting the immutable attribute on the file, but that just broke updates of the Firefox package. At that point I just gave up on Fedora, because OS updates messing with my browser was why I left Windows. I know it's not intentional in Fedora's case, but it doesn't change anything about how frustrating the experince is.

@lina It's a shame this is still an issue, because it had me give up on running what is by all other accounts a great distro, and a great project like Asahi.

Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!Apr 4

@prusa Breaking system files is, in general, never the answer to these problems.

The thing is, everyone who hits this gets irrationally angry at Fedora... there's horrible advice out there pointing at that file when that file is not the problem. There are entire arguments on Bugzilla about what should be done with that file. A change was even made in response to (incorrect, confused) advice from an affected user, then reverted. All this is a massive red herring. The problem is something else.

OS updates on Fedora never mess with your browser profile. They can't. It's the browser doing something weird, somehow triggered by OS updates, only for some people.

But nobody ever sat down with a developer to figure out what the real problem is...

@lina Agreed, I was relatively new to Linux back then, but I definitely know better than to mess with files managed by package managers.

I also felt like I wouldn't be able to file a good bug report, since I was so new to Linux then, and some previous experiences with asking for help turned me away from community forums and issue trackers.

Jaycosm🔆Apr 3

@lina What type of Firefox install are you requesting info on - Fedora repository (default), Fedora flatpak, Flathub flatpak? I actually install it using the TAR file, so I have three different versions for WebDev installed, and the version of these I use for primary browsing has never had a problem resetting the Home page on an update... which gets updated through Firefox and not Fedora. I can't say I've ever had a problem with the Flathub flatpak (add'l codecs) or the default repository either

Jaycosm🔆Apr 3

@lina You're probably aware of these installers / archives, but if you want to test changes against a portable install, the TAR file might help. Good luck! 👍

x86-64 (Stable)
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/149.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/

ARM64 (Stable)
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/149.0/linux-aarch64/en-US/

Directory Listing: /pub/firefox/releases/149.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/

@jay Fedora repository