Firefox always opens with the same old tabs

I’ve just upgraded a friend’s PC to Ubuntu 24.04 and am adjusting all the settings to reasonable ones.
The problem I have now is that Firefox always opens with the same four old tabs. Even if I close all but one or add new ones, the same four old ones appear on restarting FF.

I have checked that in the Settings/General page, that the “Open previous windows and tabs” box is NOT checked, but even so, it ought to forget very old tabs. The tabs were ones that I created while messing about so it may be that I have inadvertently changed some magic switch.

A web search has not revealed the answer and I would be grateful for advice.

Hi,

Well if the open previous settings are as you say then it sounds like a bug. My solution would be not to use FireFox ( :slight_smile: ) not least given the privacy issues in the press over the last couple of weeks.

All that aside, if this is a new install, you could try;

  • remove ~/.cache/mozilla , and see if that helps
  • remove ~/.mozilla … which will probably fix it, bit it will remove all your settings, history, bookmarks etc.

Neither solution will necessarily stop it happening again tho’…

The link you provide reads like a very poor attempt to befuddle the user. And the fact that the new CEO chooses not to reinstate the old wording just says it all, really.
So I am looking at Waterfox and will report back on my experience. Or do you have a better recommendation?

I deleted .cache/mozilla but with no obvious effect, and I am reluctant to remove mozilla as I expect to lose Thunderbird as well - just too much hassle. I might try removing just firefox and see if that fixes it.

Reinstalling FF seems to have done the trick, but had to remove Chromium, too, in order to re-install bookmarks, as the two browsers seemed to be linked in some way.

Problem solved!

:slight_smile:

It’s a bit of a no-brainer for me, I use Chromium. On PC’s it might be hard to distinguish between performance points etc when comparing different browsers, but not on a Raspberry Pi. Chromium has hardware optimizations which at don’t seem to be there in FF … so the difference is “very quick” vs “sort of usable”. Basic performance aside, for me the ad blocking code gets in the way of all sorts of completely valid software which is quite frustrating when I’m expecting stuff to “just work”.

I also rely on Google Sync, GMail and a bunch of other stuff which are all tied to my phone. Using something that doesn’t support this link would be a massive backwards step for me.

As for the article, what they’re reporting does seem to be ‘real’. They’re not the only one to be fair, today I finally got around to pulling my “PyPi” (which is “the” Python Package repository) account and the associated 18 Open Source software projects that I had published there. This was the result of “their” new Terms which cut in on the 27th of this month, which free software publishers were being forced into with no say. (now contains the famous “you agree to indemnify us …” clause)

Apparently they have now rewritten parts of their policy as a result of complaints.

Python has seeped into just about everything these days so I guess you are going to have problems if you use so much python-based s/w.
As for your predilection for Google-based things…well, you know my aversion to all things G.
I’ll continue to look into Waterfox

Mm, using Python re; new PyPi terms isn’t an issue, it’s publishing free (Python) software and libraries. The new terms make it, well, unrealistic (from my POV) to publish free software via the main repository. Don’t know how many others will be put off, or indeed how many will read the new terms that have been mailed out to everyone, but it’s just another nail in the coffin of centralized services.

I’m now running my own PyPi instances, the packages are now all available there, and I don’t have to sign my life away to publish them … :slight_smile: