removing wslview from Ubuntu-only computers?

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 1 Apr 2023 at 03:04, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> i guess you removed firefox (and somehow blocked it from re-installing)
> ?
>
> ... firefox is the package usually providing the virtual www-browser
> package in a default Ubuntu install, wslu seems to simply be the next
> in line to provide www-browser so it gets pulled in to satisfy the
> recommends of various help packages that want a browser to show their
> html help pages (digikam, gimp-help, you name it) ...

What Ogra said.

I found this issue while investigating this story:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/debian_firefox_issues/

On Debian-family distros, if you remove the _only_ web browser, it
will automatically install a different one, because being able to view
the web is considered essential functionality.

That is fair enough, really.

I found the bug, reproduced it, and was told I was wrong on Stack Exchange. :-D

(I love it when 20 year olds tell me I don't know what I am talking
about.) <- this is sarcasm.

If you install your preferred alternative browser _first_ it doesn't happen.

So, in my case, if you install Google Chrome first, _then_ remove
Firefox, it's fine. A browser is
present.

Otherwise, it sucked in weird things like Chromium or Seamonkey or something.

In the last few days I've discovered that some Snap-haters are
force-removing Firefox and installing the Mozilla tarball of Firefox
into `/opt`.

Marco: did you do something like this?

If so, the packaging system "knows" no browser is installed and so
Weird Stuff™ is going to happen.

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