02 March 2009

Playing with my penguin

Today I solved a mystery that has long eluded me. Ever since I started using Linux, I could never figure out why my Firefox (a web browser by Mozilla) plugins (flash, acrobat reader, etc.) would not load when I clicked on a Firefox icon. They only loaded when I started Firefox from a terminal window.

Then, it hit me like a ton o' bricks: Terminal must not be running the executable. Terminal must be running a shell script. I assumed it was running the executable located at:

/usr/lib/firefox[version]/firefox

but instead it was running the shell script located at

/usr/bin/firefox

So, all I had to do was change the path in the command line for the properties of the icon to reflect the shell script, and "taa-daa". No more using the terminal window to start the web browser.

I got other problems, to be sure, but most of them will be answered by simply taking a few more online Linux tutorials. Back to work, now.

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