[vox-tech] xhost+: Why you should NEVER DO THAT

[Jonathan Stickel]

Richard Harke wrote:
> On Friday 18 March 2005 18:12, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> 
>>Richard Harke wrote:
>>
>>>When I first installed firefox it refused to run. After googling about I
>>>found the advice to do xhost +. Based on this thread I should have
>>>rejected the advice leaving me with two alternatives:
>>>
>>>1:   download the firefox source and debug it.
>>>
>>>2:   apt-get purge firefox  (followed by a nasty email to somewhere)
>>
>>Have you tried firefox directly downloaded from Mozilla.org?
> 
> No, I didn't. Which seems like a reasonable thing to do. But it is not such
> a small matter. One probably ought to remove or purge the version from
> debian first, then at some point you will need to uninstall the
> Mozilla.org version before re-installing the debian version (after the problem
> is fixed) While I am not rule bound about using only deb packages, I have 
> found that apt-get does a surprisingly good job while my experience with
> tarballs has varied from easy to nightmare.
> 

I understand your reluctance.  I try very hard myself to install 
programs only through my distribution's interface.  But for FireFox, I 
think the install is a binary, probably wrapped in a shell script.  It 
shouldn't be as onerous as a tarballed source.  But, yeah, it's best if 
you can figure out your Debian specific problem.

Jonathan