What is Dolphin?

[johne53]

When launching the nautilus browser (from WSL bash) I've noticed that I can't double-click /usr/bin/firefox.esr to launch firefox (I see the error message below...)

After choosing Select Application I need to select something called Dolphin which does launch firefox, along with another empty window. Should I be selecting some other app instead of Dolphin?

[johne53]

I must admit, I've struggled with nautilus ever since I installed WSL using Debian as my chosen distro. Nautilus works fine as a browser (i.e. it allows me to navigate around my folders) but it can't do very simple things - such as double-clicking an app to launch it.

After a bit of research I've discovered that nautilus is apparently obsolete now (?) with dolphin as its successor. But on my system at least, dolphin can't even display icons. i.e. I can navigate around folders and see their content names but no icons show up (is dolphin maybe incompatible with Gnome?) Either way I've started to wonder if WSL just doesn't work very well with Debian.

I discovered that the WSL command for uninstalling a distro is wsl --unregister but before uninstalling Debian I figured I'd try a couple of alternative distros first (I tried Ubuntu-26.04 and also openSUSE Tumbleweed). Debian here added an icon on my Win10 Taskbar but neither of the others did. So how would I add something so I could launch them in the future?

[johne53]

Okay I'm getting a little bit further (kinda...) I've managed to install FedoraLinux-44 and I've configured it to give me an icon on my Windows Taskbar

In Debian I can type things like which firefox / which nautilus / which dolphin etc and it'll show me the path where each one is installed. But if I try the same thing in Fedora, it prints out what looks like my full path (which incidentally also includes my Windows path folders!).

And yet if I type which ping it'll show the correct path, exactly like Debian would. Is there maybe something extra I need to set up?

[linghengqian]

After a bit of research I've discovered that nautilus is apparently obsolete now

How did you come to this conclusion? Nautilus is still maintained at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus , and it is the default file explorer for GNOME Desktop.

Dolphin is actually unrelated to GNOME Desktop; it is the default file explorer for KDE Desktop.

[linghengqian]

This looks like it might be related to your network settings, or you might not be using Ubuntu, or you might not have the latest version of snapd installed?

[johne53]

AFAICT I have snap installed here but not snapd. Basically sudo snap install [anything] gives me the same error. I can install Firefox using apt-get but nautilus still refuses to launch it. However... when I try to launch it I now see this error in my bash terminal:-

(org.gnome.Nautilus:2763): Gdk-WARNING **: 16:14:21.161: Server is missing xdg_foreign support
sh: 1: exec: xterm: not found

Alternatively, I can install Dolphin here and Dolphin does allow me to launch Firefox but the problem with Dolphin is that it won't show me any icons:-

.. So are either of those problems solvable?

[linghengqian]

I think you've essentially done some configuration that you didn't tell me about. I haven't encountered your problem, and I don't know how you installed Firefox. Firefox and Nautilus are not pre-installed on Ubuntu WSL.

[johne53]

I managed to solve the icon issue with Dolphin by issuing this command:-

sudo apt install breeze-icon-theme

Personally I prefer the Nautilus GUI so if that xdg_foreign error can be fixed, that'd be my preference. But if all else fails, at least I've now got a working browser that launches apps via a double-click!!

[linghengqian]

In fact, I've only encountered the xdg_foreign error when using GIMP on Ubuntu 24.04 WSL, as seen in https://www.yuque.com/linghengqian/meve2v/nzwbo2gi5fuqbgnp , although it's a Chinese article. From my perspective, this is because the Mesa version bundled with wslg is too low, causing problems with GPU or iGPU detection.

You cannot change the built-in Mesa version without manually compiling wslg. wslg is a standalone WSL distribution.

[johne53]

The only thing I remember with Debian was that I moved it off my C: drive onto a different drive (because I was running out of disk space). The other OS's downloaded today installed themselves onto C: so maybe that's got something to do with it? AFAICR I haven't made any changes to WSL itself.

Which distro are you using there?

[linghengqian]

All Ubuntu. 26.04, 24.04, 22.04.