Mullvad Browser depends on dbus-glib on Linux

[vecna13]

If dbus-glib is not installed, running ./start-mullvad-browser.desktop silently fails.

On Debian:

sudo apt remove libdbus-glib-1-2
./start-mullvad-browser.desktop

On Fedora:

sudo dnf remove dbus-glib
./start-mullvad-browser.desktop

Tested with mullvad-browser-linux64-12.5.1_ALL on Debian 11, Fedora 37, and Fedora 38, all as VMs in Qubes.

I don't know if the answer is to bundle dbus-glib with Mullvad Browser or just include a note if it's unable to start, but as a user, it is confusing for the browser to just fail to launch. This scenario may come up for instance if the user has Firefox installed (and dbus-glib as a dependency), downloads Mullvad Browser (which runs at this time), decides it's the only browser they need, then uninstalls Firefox so the package manager no longer thinks it needs dbus-glib.

[vecna13]

This appears to be an upstream issue. It would be nice if the launching script included a warning if there are missing dependencies, though.

I found a related Tor Browser issue: tor browser relies on external glib/dbus installation

[vecna13]

Same issue filed for Tor Browser: Tor Browser silently fails if dbus-glib is not installed on Linux

[c3Ls1US]

Same issue filed for Tor Browser: Tor Browser silently fails if dbus-glib is not installed on Linux

This issue has been around for years, and, more importantly, this library is deprecated at this point. Apparently, the team won't fix this until Firefox 128:

Yep, but Firefox 120+ and it isn't trivial to backport. I propose to close this as a wontfix and wait for 128.