On Linux systems, Mozilla Firefox or Mozilla Thunderbird are used by normal users without root privileges most of the time. Unfortunately, this has some odd side effects. For example, it is not possible to upgrade the browser via the help menu as a normal user. Also, if you launch the applications from the command line, you might get the following error message:
(QFA)Talkback error: Can't initialize.
There are two solutions for this problem. The first solution would be to always launch the Mozilla applications with root privileges. Of course this is only possible, if you know the root password and it also poses a huge security risk. Another solution is to disable Talkback altogether. Most Linux distributions do this for their packages by default. But if you use an official build distributed directly by the Mozilla Foundation, you need to do this yourself.
To do so go to the directory of your Mozilla application. This will be the directory where the binary files of the application are located. In the sub folder extensions, you will find a folder called talkback@mozilla.org. Remove this folder and you’re done. The error message should be gone.
In the mid-term, Talkback will be replaced by an open source solution developed jointly by the Mozilla Foundation and Google. Let’s hope that this solution is a bit more Linux-friendly.
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