[BRLTTY] Firelynx v0.1.0

[Nicolas Pitre]

Hi Dietmar,

The "selenium-manager not found" line was a false alarm from my launcher 
(it only looked for a standalone command and missed the copy bundled 
inside Selenium). It did NOT cause your failure — in your virtualenv, 
Selenium's bundled manager actually fetched geckodriver fine; that's how 
you got far enough to hit the real error.

That real error, "Failed to set preferences", was the bug: on a 
brand-new install the Firefox profile directory didn't exist yet, and 
the newer geckodriver refuses to start with a profile path that isn't 
there. Firelynx now creates it first. Fixed in v0.1.1, just pushed.

On the setup: your virtualenv with `pip install selenium` is actually 
the right call on Debian — the pip package bundles a working 
selenium-manager, whereas Debian's apt python3-selenium has a 
known-broken one and geckodriver isn't in the Debian repos. You can drop 
webdriver-manager though; Firelynx doesn't use it.

So: in your venv, just update and reinstall —

    git clone https://github.com/npitre/firelynx.git
    cd firelynx && ./install.sh

If geckodriver ever fails to download, grab it from
https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases and put it on your PATH.

If anything else misbehaves, run with --debug and send the output.


On Tue, 9 Jun 2026, Dietmar Segbert wrote:

> Hello Nicko,
> 
> thanks for your work.
> 
> I have tried to install firelynx under debian trixie.
> In Trixie python3-selenium ist version 4.24.xx and i become some errors  
> selenium-manager not found
> 
> The install.sh installs under my user musik, but if i start firelynx thies  
> error will appear.
> 
> In my ser-account segbertd if use a virtual Version of python and i  
> install pip3 install selenium and pip3 install webdriver-manager. The  
> install.sh ends without errors, but firelynx http://localhost ends with  
> the error:
> 
> Using installed location: /home/segbertd/.local/share/firelynx
> Warning: selenium-manager not found. Please install python3-selenium and  
> selenium-manager packages.
> ERROR:src.firefox_backend:Failed to start Firefox: Message: Failed to set  
> preferences: unknown error; For documentation on this error, please visit:  
> https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/troubleshooting/ 
> errors#sessionnotcreatedexception
> 
> In my virtual env python3-selenium ist 4.44.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Dietmar
> 
> > nico at fluxnic.net schrieb am 09.06.26:
> 
> > Hi all,
> 
> > That thing I teased is out. Firelynx bridges lynx and Firefox: a small
> > local proxy runs your lynx requests through a headless Firefox, so
> > JavaScript actually executes and modern sites render, then hands clean,
> > semantic HTML back to lynx. You keep lynx's fast, braille-friendly
> > interface ? your keybindings and workflow ? while getting a real shot at
> > JavaScript-heavy sites that normally serve a blank page. Reddit, for
> > instance, works (it even clears Reddit's JavaScript challenge). It all
> > runs on your own machine; HTTPS, forms and logins, and basic handling
> > for JavaScript dialogs and multi-factor auth may sometimes work too.
> 
> > Honesty up front: this is alpha. It's slower than plain lynx (a full
> > Firefox renders every page), content extraction sometimes trims too
> > much, and the one thing I really wanted to crack ? Google Search ? still
> > trips Google's bot detection and lands on a CAPTCHA. I tried a lot of
> > approaches and couldn't beat it, so I'm not holding the release back any
> > longer. DuckDuckGo is the default and works well; other engines are
> > hit-or-miss (Bing sometimes stalls on a cookie-consent page). For
> > everyday browsing plain lynx is still more reliable; reach for Firelynx
> > when a site really needs JavaScript.
> 
> > Linux only; needs Firefox, lynx, and Python/Selenium. It's a git clone
> > plus ./install.sh ? Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu steps are in the README:
> 
> >   https://github.com/npitre/firelynx
> 
> > Enjoy !
> 
> > Nicolas
> 
> 
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