WSLU (WSLView) is broken

[Thwompin]

I figured out the cause behind my 2 persistent problems with Kubuntu
Problem 1: Opening web links from applications doesn't work, a blank page icon shows up in the panel and quickly disappears.
Problem 2: Adding applications to panel as a widget doesn't work, the same blank page icon shows up and disappears when the widget is clicked.

Before the blank page icon disappeared, I managed to hover over it to get the tooltip to pop up and it said "WSLView Web Browser" for both. Why is this thing hijacking links on my system? Is it safe to remove?
I removed the wslu package and both of these problems disappeared, however after rebooting it asked me to install language packs and I obliged, and it ended up reinstalling wslu for some reason.

[oshunluvr]

FYI, wslu is "a collection of utilities for Windows 10 Linux Subsystem."

AFAIK, you don't need it unless you're running Linux from within Windows 10. According to apt-cache, it's unlikely you need it.

stuart@office:~$ apt-cache policy wslu
wslu:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 3.2.3-0ubuntu3
Version table:
3.2.3-0ubuntu3 500
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe amd64 Packages
stuart@office:~$ apt-cache depends wslu
wslu
Depends: desktop-file-utils
desktop-file-utils:i386
Depends: bc
bc:i386
Recommends: pulseaudio-utils
Recommends: x11-utils
Suggests: imagemagick
graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat
imagemagick:i386
imagemagick-6.q16:i386
imagemagick-6.q16
stuart@office:~$ apt-cache rdepends wslu
wslu
Reverse Depends:

[claydoh]

Dang 'virtual' packages. wslu satisfies the category of "www-browser", as do a whole passel of potential items
Ubuntu has some sort of issue with this, we have seen this get pulled in when installing Gimp's help packages, for example. No idea why some people get wslu as opposed to some other browser or browser-like choice.
My first though was that people removing the FF snap and it's 'fake' deb don't have anything that provides www-browser, but the PPA package from Mozillateam definitely does.


Thwompin what web browser(s) do you have installed, and how were they installed?

Installing any browser package shown on that list will provide this, and keep the system from pulling in wslu, I think.
As will using the PPA version of Firefox, or installing Google Chrome. Not sure about other third-party browsers installed as a deb.

[Thwompin]

Oops I thought wslu was a default system package when I made this thread, now I know it gets pulled in from gimp's help documentation.
I've seen the recommendation to install something else that fulfills the www-browser requirement, but I've opted to simply disable notifications for missing language packs so gimp-help-en doesn't get recommended to me.

claydoh
I'm using the default Firefox snap.