1512565 - Linux: Firefox-download PDF opens, via Firefox, in Wine PDF reader (Adobe), not default PDF reader

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[najoll]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0

Steps to reproduce:

Downloaded a PDF in Firefox.
Opened the download via Firefox's download window.


Actual results:

The PDF opened in Adobe Reader (very slowly), under Wine.


Expected results:

The PDF should have opened in Okular, which is my default PDF reader. All other PDFs on my system, and the downloaded one if opened outside of Firefox, open in Okular.

Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon
Firefox 63.0.3

Comment 2

[Brendan Dahl [:bdahl]]

If you go to Firefox preferences -> Applications, what is selected for "Portable Document Format (PDF)"?

Comment 3

[signupemail]

Answer: 'Preview in Firefox'. The associated dropdown menu contains these options:

• Always ask
• Save file
• [A separator line]
• Use <path to Adobe Reader run under Wine.]
• Use Other

I find that, if I select 'Use Other' and enter a path to a native Linux PDF reader, then the following happens. When I enter into Firefox a direct URL for a PDF, that reader opens with the PDF. And, when I open an existing PDF download via Firefox's download menu, again the native reader opens.

So, after all, perhaps things are proceeding by design. However, (1) it could and perhaps should be easier to change the default PDF reader that Firefox invokes. Also, one wonders (2) I whether the Wine reader somehow got selected as the default. Yet, testing in a virtual machine - Windows host, almost freshly installed Linux guest - shows that, no, the native reader opens the PDF. It seems them that 1 is the only problem here.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

This bug just moved component after 3 years, and there is important information missing. In particular, comment 0 says that Okular is the "default PDF reader", but the steps make it clear that Firefox either recognizes a different default or has been manually told where Adobe is. Unfortunately, "default app for extension/mimetype X" is an absolute mess on Linux. Without knowing where these different OS defaults live and what they were, we can't do anything meaningful here. If more detailed information about this appears, we can reopen.

For future reference, we check at least local mailcap files and, for GNOME-based systems, the GNOME VIOFS stuff, cf. https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/3c8a7970944daaf917b547dffc0790bcd37cadc1/uriloader/exthandler/unix/nsGNOMERegistry.cpp#96 and https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/3c8a7970944daaf917b547dffc0790bcd37cadc1/uriloader/exthandler/unix/nsOSHelperAppService.cpp#1187 . We might check more/other stuff, I stopped looking because anyway we don't know which and/or both of these were involved at the time, plus the code changed since 3 years ago...