Category: Web

librewolf doesn’t work with passkeys

whbeebe
Screen capture of Yubico authentication failure (I deleted my username before I took this capture)

I installed LibreWolf on my Linux Mint system after reading about it on a fellow blogger’s site (see link below). It installed easily, appeared highly performant, and even took the tab fix I’d written about for Firefox nearly two years ago (again, see link below). I wanted to try this alternative to Firefox because of all the recent drama about how Firefox will now handle personal data; it didn’t go down well at all with a lot of users, myself included. But long before all this happened, I frankly got tired of all the limitations I kept running into using Firefox, so I switched to Vivaldi and haven’t looked back. But hope springs eternal, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for Firefox when it was young and pure of heart. So I decided to install LibreWolf and see if it could rekindle a bit of the old Firefox magic.

After following the clear installation instructions for installing LibreWolf on my Linux Mint system, I tried to use LibreWolf to log into my GitHub account using my Yubico security key. That’s when I got the web page at the top of this post. My Yubico key works just fine with Vivaldi, Google Chrome, and original Firefox on my Linux Mint system. Why LibreWolf, which bills itself as a more secure rebuild of Firefox won’t support my Yubico key is beyond me. That lack of full support is a hard failure as far as I’m concerned. I won’t get rid of LibreWolf as I have more than enough disk space to let it sit on the “shelf” while it matures a bit more. I’ll check out any new versions that drop and see if this problem gets fixed. But if you’re like me and use Firefox with a hardware passkey to log into sites that support it, then I’d give a long hard thought about replacing Firefox with LibreWolf, no matter how you might feel about Firefox at the moment. You will not be happy with that decision, I assure you.

Links

Goodbye Firefox, hello Librewolf

LibreWolf — https://librewolf.net

what browser should i use on linux?

Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic — https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/

Yubico — https://www.yubico.com

how to set up an rss feed for arcanesciencelab

whbeebe2 Comments

In the past I’ve been asked how to set up an RSS feed for this blog. I never answered because, I’m embarrassed to admit, I didn’t know how. Until now. The basic answer is to take the URL of this blog and add ‘feed’ to the end of it, thusly:

/feed/

Examples

Inoreader showing my blog’s RSS feed

If you copy this into an iPhone app that tracks RSS feeds, such as Inoreader (see the example above), then you can follow along when I post a new entry. This might be better than getting an email every time I make a post, as it keeps the clutter out of your inbox. Inoreader also has a web page ( https://www.inoreader.com ), so you can follow along in your browser if that’s your wish.

However, Inoreader charges a fee if you want their professional capabilities. If you don’t want to pay anything, and you’d rather follow along on your tablet or personal computer, then I recommend that you install Vivaldi (it’s free) and then click the RSS feed link above, like so:

Vivaldi RSS feed

If you then click the Follow Feed button, you’ll wind up with the following dialog:

I’d suggest that you change the refresh interval to something like every day, or perhaps every week. Once it’s configured, finish the process by clicking Add Feed.

This is what a full blown RSS feed looks like in Vivaldi. What I like about this view is how the entries are down one column, and the far right pane is used to hold the content.

I’m slowly adding entries to my Vivaldi browser as I use Vivaldi for so much more than reading RSS feeds. I may not keep Inoreader on my iPhone for much longer. I spend considerable time in my PC’s browser, not so much in any application on my iPhone. And I’m not a fan of the constant “buy the pro plan” blurbs that keep popping up (not just on Inoreader but on a lot of other iOS applications that say they’re free with a paid ‘pro’ plan as well).

One last bit of administrative trivia: I’ve set the maximum number of articles you can get the first time to 20. Hopefully this will keep you occupied the first time you try this out.