Ubuntu – How to completely uninstall and reinstall Firefox

I eventually worked out a way to get what I want using .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications that allows me to launch specific profiles from the dash.

The process for the facebook launcher is to copy the original firefox launcher into the above directory. Then edit two lines to give it a friendly name that the dash will match against, and a command that will launch firefox with the profile I want.

To copy the file:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications/
cp /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/facefox.desktop

Then you need to edit two lines of the new file - Name= and Exec=. The Name line is near the top, and the Exec line is after lots of translations. Note that there is more than one Exec= line in the file, you want to edit the first one you find.

I edited them to be:

...
Name=Facebook Firefox Web Browser
...
Exec=firefox -P facebook -no-remote %u
...

Just to explain the Exec line, this is what you can type at a terminal to launch firefox, with:

• %u being arguments that might be added by the desktop environment,
• the -no-remote flag being required to allow more than one instance of firefox to run, and
• -P facebook selects the profile to use.