Monthly Archive for November, 2025

LibreWolf 145 & Integrated AppImage

Published on November 23, 2025 in Computing Notes.

LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox that removes many of Mozilla’s bad decisions.1 A mirror of LibreWolf 145.0.1-2.x86_64 appimage is available here. Debian stable requires one to use a format other than the LibreWolf repo because as of 23 November, 2025 their site says the following:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install extrepo -y
sudo extrepo enable librewolf
sudo apt update && sudo apt install librewolf -y

Extrarepo exists only in Sid, which makes it unsuitable for Bookworm, or other stable Debian editions.  Adding Sid repos can turn Debian into something akin to a rolling distribution but it can cause problems if one wants older software.

To integrate the linked appimage into the operating system, take the following actions.2

./LibreWolf.x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract
mv squashfs-root librewolf-145.0.1-2
mv librewolf-145.0.1-2 $HOME/Apps
cp $HOME/Apps/librewolf-145.0.1-2/io.gitlab.LibreWolf.desktop $HOME/.local/share/applications

Then, modify the four lines in $HOME/.local/share/applications/io.gitlab.LibreWolf.desktop that say exec. Those lines need to reflect the path where the executable resides.

I was working on this with Obsidian and preparing to archive the appimage on this website when I ran into a snag. The Obsidian .desktop referenced the AppRun from the AppImage whereas Librewolf referenced the executable named librewolf. After resolving this, I checked the licenses. Obsidian distributes software that is under the Apache License. That license allows one to add other requirements to their additions to the software. Their additional term is that you may not redistribute their software. They are even more onerous that IBM was with Lotus Symphony 3. Lotus Symphony 3 was an office suite built on Open Office that had an excellent tabbed document interface. It was a beautiful interface that Open Office should have incorporated, but for some reason they did not. The Symphony 3 license allows you to redistribute on physical disc to your friends and family, but not via internet website. Obsidian says no to redistribution at all. I was using Obsidian extensively on all my mobile devices, but will have to discontinue using it now. I have no interest in building open source machines with open source operating systems and having software that does not allow you to mirror it.

./Obsidian-1.10.3.AppImage --appimage-extract
mv squashfs-root Obsidian-1.10.3
mv Obsidian-1.10.3 $HOME/Apps
cp $HOME/Apps/Obsidian-1.10.3/obsidian.desktop $HOME/.local/share/applications

Modify the exec line in $HOME/.local/share/applications/obsidian.desktop to reflect the path where the AppImage contents appear. The exec should point to the application binary and not the AppRun file. e.g. $HOME/Apps/Obsidian-1.10.3/obsidian

I will leave this here for memory and education, but will discontinue the use of Obsidian since its future as an ongoing concern is limited to their availability of their website as a distribution channel. That does not bode well. Symphony 3 (1.3 on Linux) is nearly extinct, but one can still run it on old virtual machines.

  1. Mozilla’s strategic direction seems to be toward operating as an advertising company that uses the software clients themselves as the vehicle for advertisements and user data rather than websites and advertising platforms showing advertisements on those sites.
  2. I use $HOME/Apps and $HOME/Applications to install programs like this rather than opt so that I can easily modify files or use them in backup scripts. Typically Apps contains smaller programs, and Applications contains larger ones such as GPT4ALL which consumes tens of gigabytes.
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My refined direction is digital sovereignty

Published on November 2, 2025 in Computing Notes.

My refined direction is digital sovereignty via the old paths with a goal of writing at least one article per week. The complexity of the articles will change because many projects are planned for the long term, but getting started on them takes a very long time..

I setup a RAID 5 in my old computer using new Western Digital 2 TB drives. In this case, the old machine is a Hewlett Packard Z600. The computer is very old in computer years. It has 12 Cores via dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPUs of model X5675 at 3.07GHz. [1] The prices on these on eBay have gone through the roof for old desktops computers of many types. One can easily find conversations about hard drives from three or four years discussing prices of $15 per terabyte. Now they are over $30 per terabyte.

I had purchased a used 2TB drive to use as Samba share space in the machine, and it went bad and locked into read-only mode within about a year. In deciding whether to buy used or new drives, I came to the conclusion that on an annual basis, one ends up spending the same or more via used drives than they do with new drives. Were one to purchase used drives, twice as many need to be acquired which eliminates the financial benefit while increasing one’s stress.

I could not remember my Vivaldi sync password despite creating the account only a couple of days ago. I tried several times to remember it, and then connections to vivaldi.net started timing out. It seems to me that they blocked me. If that had happened with the ability to access my email, it would have been a real issue. Because of this, I need to work on a more digitally sovereign approach here.

The extensions I use for Vivaldi include the Obsidian Web Clipper, Joplin Web Clipper, Zotero Connector, floccus bookmarks sync, SingleFile, and uMatrix.

For LibreWolf, my extensions are Obsidian Web Clipper, SingleFile, Copy PlainText, floccus bookmarks sync, Joplin Web Clipper, Search by Image, Tree Style Tab, uMatrix, Undo Close Tab, and Web Archives.

  1. https://www.ebay.com/sch/179/i.html?_nkw=z600. Reviewed 11/1/2025, (Prices ranged from a single poorly described one for $160 with free shipping to $250 and 300 plus almost triple digit shipping costs. There were two pages total, and the entire last page was filled with $800 or $900 or even $1200 systems advertising things like 4 monitors for trading, 8 monitors, for trading and the like. The second best of all was 249.95 with free delivery.)
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