Web browser on Mint 13

[wpshooter]

There is some type of web browser which is on my installation of Mint 13 which apparently is installed by default, this is in addition to the FIREFOX browser which is also apparently installed by default.

It is listed on the Internet section of the menus, has a little blue icon and say WEB / browse the web.

What is the NAME of this browser ?

[karlchen]

Hello, wpshooter.

Have you clicked on the blue icon in order to find out which browser comes up?
The only Mint 13 which I know that brings along the Firefox icon and a blue icon labelled "web browser" is Mint 13 xfce. And guess what, both icons launch Firefox.
If I changed the default browser to let us say Opera e.g. then the Firefox icon would still launch Firefox, the Opera icon would launch Opera, and the blue "Web browser" icon would launch the default browser Opera then.

Kind regards,
Karl

[wpshooter]

Hello, wpshooter.

Have you clicked on the blue icon in order to find out which browser comes up?
The only Mint 13 which I know that brings along the Firefox icon and a blue icon labelled "web browser" is Mint 13 xfce. And guess what, both icons launch Firefox.
If I changed the default browser to let us say Opera e.g. then the Firefox icon would still launch Firefox, the Opera icon would launch Opera, and the blue "Web browser" icon would launch the default browser Opera then.

Kind regards,
Karl

Karl:

Attached is a screenshot of what I am getting when I click on the WEB browser choice.

[karlchen]

Hello, wpshooter.

Which Mint 13 edition are you using? Mate edition? Cinnamon edition? xcfe edition? KDE edition? (don't think it is KDE, no sign of KDE present)
Have you used gnome-system-monitor or the command "ps axu" to find out which process has been launched for the browser that your screenshot displays?
The screenshot does not really hold too many hints as to which programme this might be. Does not look like Firefox to me. Does not look like any browser that I know. - Hm, might be Firefox with a very minimalistic interface or Chromium? (I am just specualting here.)
You might also check the commandline which the blue icon launches by inspecting the appropriate .desktop file, very likely located either in /usr/share/applications or in ~/.local/share/applications.
Or you could launch Synaptic package manager and find out which other browser beside Firefox, if any, has been installed on your system: Chromium e.g.

Kind regards,
Karl

[wpshooter]

Hello, wpshooter.

Which Mint 13 edition are you using? Mate edition? Cinnamon edition? xcfe edition? KDE edition? (don't think it is KDE, no sign of KDE present)
Have you used gnome-system-monitor or the command "ps axu" to find out which process has been launched for the browser that your screenshot displays?
The screenshot does not really hold too many hints as to which programme this might be. Does not look like Firefox to me. Does not look like any browser that I know. - Hm, might be Firefox with a very minimalistic interface or Chromium? (I am just specualting here.)
You might also check the commandline which the blue icon launches by inspecting the appropriate .desktop file, very likely located either in /usr/share/applications or in ~/.local/share/applications.
Or you could launch Synaptic package manager and find out which other browser beside Firefox, if any, has been installed on your system: Chromium e.g.

Kind regards,
Karl

Karl:

Am using Linux 13 mate.

Hmmmmmm, system monitor indicates that the browser that I showed you is Epiphany.

Here is the reason I am asking about all of this.

As of recently, when trying to list items for sale on the Gunbroker.com website, if I open gunbroker in Firefox and try to post an item for sale, when I get to the bottom of the first screen of info that I have to fill in and then hit the NEXT button at the bottom of the page to go to the next page, the browser (Firefox) just freezes. I can go into system monitor and end/kill Firefox. If I boot to a Linux Mint 13 USB thumb drive OS, which has the initial version (not upgrade to version 23) of Firefox that came with the original release version of Mint 13 Mate, I do not get this problem of the browser freezing/locking when trying to post items for sale on Gunbroker.

Also, if I try posting the gunbroker sale item on the Epiphany browser it work just fine, no freezing/locking up.

I contacted gunbroker technical support about this and their suggestion was that this problem may have something to do with JAVA.

However, if it is a problem with JAVA wouldn't this problem present itself when using the Epiphany browser as well as when using version 23 of Firefox ??? Does Epiphany browser NOT use JAVA ?

Thanks.

[karlchen]

Hello, wpshooter.

Oh, it is Epiphany, the intuitive Gnome webbrowser, as the Synaptic description tells.
Now it is clear why I did not recognize it, it has not been installed here. As I have not uninstalled it knowlingly it may not be installed by default on Mint 13 Cinnamon.
It quite looks as if Epiphany can use Java. Cf here, please, Customizing Epiphany, section 10.1.3. Privacy Preferences

Anyway. Back to your Firefox problem.
Does the Gunbroker website require Java at all? - Internet webpages that make use of Java are pretty rare.
Therefore an attempt would be to disable the Java plugin inside Firefox and go to the Gunbroker webpage and see if Firefox exhibits any problems still.

Inside Firefox go to Tools => Addons. Locate the Java plugin and click on the [Disable] button. - By the way, which plugin version does Firefox use? - Anything older than Oracle Java 7u25 is known to be vulnerable to exploits. This is why current Firefox versions will refuse to use outdated Java plugins. This might be the cause of your problem.

Kind regards,
Karl

[wpshooter]

Hello, wpshooter.

Oh, it is Epiphany, the intuitive Gnome webbrowser, as the Synaptic description tells.
Now it is clear why I did not recognize it, it has not been installed here. As I have not uninstalled it knowlingly it may not be installed by default on Mint 13 Cinnamon.
It quite looks as if Epiphany can use Java. Cf here, please, Customizing Epiphany, section 10.1.3. Privacy Preferences

Anyway. Back to your Firefox problem.
Does the Gunbroker website require Java at all? - Internet webpages that make use of Java are pretty rare.
Therefore an attempt would be to disable the Java plugin inside Firefox and go to the Gunbroker webpage and see if Firefox exhibits any problems still.

Inside Firefox go to Tools => Addons. Locate the Java plugin and click on the [Disable] button. - By the way, which plugin version does Firefox use? - Anything older than Oracle Java 7u25 is known to be vulnerable to exploits. This is why current Firefox versions will refuse to use outdated Java plugins. This might be the cause of your problem.

Kind regards,
Karl

Karl:

In Firefox, I don't see any plugin named JAVA.

However, if I go into Synaptic, I see certain JAVA applications including but not limited to JAVA-Common which are installed (apparently done by the OS install - NOT by me).

Thanks.

[karlchen]

Hello, wpshooter.

Could the installed Java edition be OpenJDK like to be seen in my screenshot (click image to enlarge)? The version numbers may be different.
[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/X7u2NY0.png[/rimg]
(OpenJDK and IcedTea installed)
Is there a Firefox plugin which is named IcedTea? The version number might be different from my screenshot (click image to enlarge).
[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/Wwt5oCV.png[/rimg]
(Firefox IcedTea disabled)
If Firefox displays such a plugin, you might try switching its state: if it is enabled, disable it. If it is disabled, enable it. Then you might try the Gunbroker webpage again.

Kind regards,
Karl

[wpshooter]

Karl:

Thanks. Inactivating the Iced Tea plugin under Firefox seems to have fixed the problem with GB not being able to function correctly.

Now, my next question is why is it necessary to inactivate this plugin in order for GB to function correctly.

And next, will deactivating Iced Tea plugin be detrimental to any other web functions on my system ?

Is there some other JAVA plugin that would be a better choice than Iced Tea ? I know that when I used to used Ubuntu, that the JAVA plugin was a version 6 as I remember ?

Thanks.

[karlchen]

Hello, wpshooter.

I cannot tell you why the Gunbroker website will make your Firefox hang in case the Java plugin has been enabled.

Basically, there are two lines of Java software plus Java browser plugin:

• OpenJDK Java. The corresponding browser plugin is IcedTea. - For legal reasons, Linux distributions like Ubuntu und Mint are allowed to offer them in their repositories for downloading and installing.
• Oracle Java and Oracle Java browser plugin. - For legal reasons, Linux distributions like Ubuntu und Mint are NOT allowed to offer them in their repositories for downloading and installing.
  Each end user is allowed to download them and install them. Yet, doing so is a manual procedure. There is a PPA repository, however, which performs the manual steps for you.

About Java versions:
No matter whether you use OpenJDK or Oracle Java, the Java version 1.6.x has been discontinued and is known to hold severe security vulnerabilities. These are actively exploited by malicious websites.
Only recently two persons' computers whom I know were infected by the same trojan horse (ransomware) which had made its way onto the machines by exploiting a known hole in the Java plugin 1.6_27 and older.
True both were Windows machines. So the trojan horse would not have worked on Mint.
Nonetheless I will not have any Java 1.6.x on any machine, but replace it by Java 1.7_25.
But even Java 1.7_25 cannot be considered safe.
So as a rule I disable the Java browser plugins by default, no matter whether it is the Oracle Java plugin or the OpenJDK plugin named IcedTea.
Websites in the internet that require Java inside the browser are rare.
There are, however, quite a few commercial office programes which are used by companies in their internal network that run inside a web browser and that depend on Java.

Kind regards,
Karl