[SOLVED] Update Manager nags about installing Firefox language packs when Firefox is not installed

[IronRod]

I had previously removed Firefox using Software Manager (I installed Brave, which I prefer).
Today, I noticed that 'Update Manager' wanted to install "English language packs for Firefox"

So, I checked for Firefox: which firefox and it returned nothing as I expected.
I then ran: sudo apt-get --purge autoremove firefox which cleaned up a lot of other stuff but I didn't see anything about Firefox.

I then refreshed 'Update Manager' and it still wants to install the language pack.
Why is it requesting to install an upgrade something for an app that is not installed?

I searched the forum and found a couple related articles but it seems this no longer resolves the issue. This article Uninstalling Firefox (viewtopic.php?p=1124472&sid=6760ad8068c ... 0#p1124472 ended by referring to another article Solve a problem after removing pre-installed Programs (viewtopic.php?p=1053068#p1053068) which explains why this happens and how to resolve it by editing the install_remove.py file. However, my install_remove.py does not contain the references listed in the article; i.e., a search for 'firefox' does not find any such string.

Looking around further on my system, I found that the /usr/lib/firefox/ and /usr/lib/firefox-addons/ directories still exist despite Firefox being removed. The firefox folder is empty of files (only a directory structure within) but the firefox-addons contains an extensions directory which contains a couple langpack-en* files.

I suspect these are causing the issue? Is the solution as simple as remove both of these two directories from /usr/lib/?

[DJ55]

I don't know the answer to your question, but if it was my system I'd go ahead and move those directories to a flash drive and see if anything doesn't work properly after that. Also, I'd be curious to see the results of the command dpkg-query -l | grep firefox.

[karlchen]

Hello, IronRod.

The software repos will provide one software package for firefox and one software package for each additional language, which you want to add to Firefox.
So the solution is as simple as uninstalling the firefox language packages, which Update Manager offers for updating.

E.g. the terminal command

Code: Select all

dpkg --list firefox firefox-locale-*

will list the Firefox packages which are still installed on your system.
Uninstall them. And Update Manager will no longer offer any updates for them.

Regards,
Karl

[IronRod]

@karlchen: Great answer. Indeed, dpkg showed the firefox-locale-en installed which corresponds to the langpack-en files I found on the drive. Using dpkg to remove this resolved the situation. And, I learned some more about working with Linux utilities.