Comrade Ferret

2025-10-06 00:19:22

ferret@hub.workersofthe.world

Can any other #Debian users confirm requiring Firefox or else Chromium being installed on the system for one reason or another?

2025-10-06 05:51:03

Stylus

stylus@social.afront.org

@ferret

No, Firefox/Chromium are not "required" in Debian. Rather, they are "recommended" by a special package called task-desktop. This means that firefox-esr will be installed by default when you select task-desktop (or task-xfce-desktop, etc). (and if you turn off only firefox-esr by one of the methods I'll describe below then task-desktop and task-gnome-desktop will install chromium due to a chain of recommends).

You can see that here where it says "rec: firefox [...] or firefox-esr" or in apt-cache show task-desktop

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/task-desktop

For more on the requires/recommends/suggests relationships, you can see https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#binary-dependencies-depends-recommends-suggests-enhances-pre-depends

If you prefer to install task-desktop but not firefox and chromium, you will have to do it manually rather than from the installer (or from tasksel) as far as I know. A command like this appears to achieve the result, but I only tested it inside a docker image: apt install --install-recommends=yes task-desktop firefox-esr- chromium- (the trailing - is what tells the system to avoid installing firefox-esr even though it would otherwise be installed due to "recommends").

You can also prevent installation of these packages by pinning them with a priority of -1. For instance, by putting the following content in /etc/apt/preferences.d/nobrowser before installing task-desktop:

Package: firefox-esr
Pin-Priority: -1
Package: chromium
Pin-Priority: -1

2025-10-06 06:02:04

aspragg

aspragg@ohai.social

@ferret If you have `aptitude` installed, you can search on the command line with

aptitude search "?installed ?depends(chromium|firefox|www-browser)"
aptitude search "?installed ?recommends(chromium|firefox|www-browser)"

(It can be done in one command, but the combination of "and"s and "or"s makes it awkward)

Or you can use the #aptitude TUI (run `aptitude` without options) to browse the dependency trees. `?` for help, `q` to quit.

2025-10-06 08:05:36

Comrade Ferret

ferret@hub.workersofthe.world

Thank you @Stylus and @aspragg ! I'll relay this along.