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I need to uninstall and reinstall Firefox to get the ExpressVPN extension to work. The extension was working fine before (I was running Ubuntu 20.x), but I just upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04.01 and the ExpressVPN browser extension stopped working. The documentation says there's a known issue where it can't connect with the desktop app if Firefox was installed from the Ubuntu software center, so I need to uninstall and then reinstall from the command line.

The problem is the software center does not show Firefox as an installed app, even though it's open and running on my system, and I can see the icon when I click the Show Applications menu. So I can't uninstall it from the Software center. I originally installed Firefox when I first got this laptop and I no longer remember exactly how I installed it, but I think it was just from the software center in Ubuntu 20.x. I have also tried sudo apt-get purge firefox and sudo snap remove firefox in terminal -- both of these tell me that firefox was not found so could not be removed. type firefox returns bash: type: firefox: not found.

Any ideas where I might look to find this so I can uninstall it and start again?

rzl
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  • Strange, any luck with firefox-esr? Or which firefox? – BobserLuck Nov 08 '22 at 18:36
  • which firefox returns nothing. is firefox-esr a terminal command, or a package or something else? – rzl Nov 08 '22 at 18:45
  • It's a package, and used to be what Ubuntu defaulted to for a while. Stupid question, but but are you certain firefox is currently installed? – BobserLuck Nov 08 '22 at 18:46
  • If it is there and you can run it from the UI, try starting it up and looking through System Monitor to see what's running from where. – BobserLuck Nov 08 '22 at 18:48
  • Ubuntu converted to use snap for Firefox. Even installing from command line will default to snap. Snaps are sandboxed and have some limitations. You can use ppa, but still have to change priority, so snap not installed in place of ppa. Details which I used to add Firefox ppa but I also removed all snaps: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-deb-apt-ubuntu-22-04 Somewhat similar, but removes all snaps (which I do): https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/general/documentation/how-to-s/662503-how-to-set-priority-for-a-ppa-i-e-using-firefox-without-snapd – oldfred Nov 08 '22 at 18:58

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You can try to run the command sudo snap remove --purge firefox but based on what you said, there is a good chance you'll get an error similar to

error: cannot perform the following tasks:
-Remove data for snap "firefox" (1943) (unlinkat /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell/en_ZA.dic: read-only file system)

If you get that error, run lsblk -fe7 -o+ro to verify that /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell is mounted. If so, run sudo systemctl stop var-snap-firefox-common-host\\x2dhunspell.mount and sudo systemctl disable var-snap-firefox-common-host\\x2dhunspell.mount to finally remove the firefox snap package. This came from an answer from https://askubuntu.com/questions/1414173/completely-remove-firefox-snap-package

Formula1Fan43
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