Firefox 96.0 oddity

[taylorkh]

The machine in question is running Mint Mate 20.2.

I have found that when I open Edit; Settings in said version of Firefox I see this link at the top of each page

Your browser is being managed by your organization.

The link takes me to about:policies and shows the Policy Name DisableAppUpdate set to true. This is a personal computer, no organization. I have also found:

The same version of FF on Ubuntu Mate 20.04 does not show this link.
A freshly installed Mint Mate 20.2 loads FF 89.0.2 which does not have the link. Upgrading FF to 96.0 causes the link to appear.
The FF community discussion about this issue talks about Windows, changing registry entries, blaming some anti-malware software etc. Nothing about Linux.

I have not yet come across any negative impact from this. Still, as this link does not appear in Ubuntu it smells like a Mint issue to me. Any ideas?

TIA,

Ken

p.s. After updating to FF 96.0 I observer that the "It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while... [Refresh Firefox] message appears each time I start it. Refresh hoses a bunch of things. I think there is a way to disable this message but I have not found it. I think I need to try it on a test machine and see if it makes the offending managed by your organization thing go away.

[nicrobi]

Hi taylorkh.

This is just a mechanism to stop Firefox attempting to update itself as updates are handled by the Update Manager in Mint. It's explained in detail in this article: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244.

Nick

[taylorkh]

Thanks Nick!

Updating a program from within the program? That is such a Windows thing I have relied on repos and apt or yum or dnf etc. to update everything I would not even think of going to the Help; About Firefox and try to update from that dialog as I used to do on XP.

And THANK YOU for pointing me to the Mint blog. That is some great information. I have bookmarked it and will be reading it often. I am in the process of moving away from CentOS 7 which is getting long in the tooth and will probably move to Mint. I have several Mint virtual machines and the are working great. Changing the OS on my host workstation is a major undertaking and I don't want to be down for too long for the process. One of these days.

Thanks again,

Ken

[karlchen]

<mod> gbksiazczak's post has been moved into a separate thread: viewtopic.php?f=47&t=365824 </mod>

[Raycoupe]

I hope firefox will change that misleading message: Your browser is being managed by your organization.
After experiencing problems with FF myself, it took my way too long to find out that this change was not not the cause of my problem. They don't even bother to mention it after FF was updated.

[karlchen]

Hello, Raycoupe.

They don't even bother to mention it after FF was updated.

I am not quite sure who "they" are. The Linux Mint team has explained, to be precise the Mint Project Lead Clem has.
E.g. here:

• Cf. Clem's blog article on Linux Mint signs a partnership with Mozilla
  (Do not miss the section "Frequently Asked Questions".
  Explicitly explains about “Your browser is being managed by your organization” and “Updates disabled by your system administrator”. It simply means in both cases that Firefox self-updates have been disabled. They are not needed, because the Update Manager takes care of them.)
• Als cf. Clem's official blog article on Updating to Firefox 96

Maybe, too, reading this post will help understand better: Re: Firefox 96 preparations

Regards,
Karl

[Raycoupe]

Hello, Raycoupe.

I am not quite sure who "they" are. The Linux Mint team has explained, to be precise the Mint Project Lead Clem has.

Hello Karl,

A pop-up after updating would do the trick, showing changes for example, is what I meant by that remark. They (FF) do it with other features their trying to promote.

I'm not used to following blogs on software products, since I'm the type of computer user that's is not interested in all the workings, updates and changes. I just want to work with the tool and like it to stay the same (one of the reason for dumping windows). If it wasn't necessary for security, I wouldn't update my software until I required some new functionality. The amount of time spent getting things to work again the way I like it, through all these years is staggering. So my remarks were also influenced by a bit frustration, since the update screwed up my dutch spellchecking in FF as well.

Since I'm not a native English speaker, I don't understand who or what a 'Lead Clem' is. Search engines don't know either, besides it being a first name of a couple of people.

Regards,
Ray