Flatpak/Firefox install BROKE native 'Abrowser' in Trisquel 9.0

I use (and enjoy) the GNULinux distro Trisquel 9.0, which is represented as not allowing ANY proprietary software at all.

The OS comes with ‘Abrowser’ (based closely on Firefox), natively installed for browsing the web, and it does not allow ordinary Firefox to be installed (presumably because there is ‘something’ in Firefox that is not ‘purely’ open source (though I don’t know exactly what.)

However, since I do have and like the end-user version of Firefox on other OS/platforms, and Flatpak is purported/marketed to securely ‘sandbox’ any app they offer, I decided to give Flatpak > Firefox a try…on GnuLinux Trisquel 9.0.

Result: Flatpak does NOT securely sandbox Firefox (or perhaps others), to prevent any app from modifying native system files. Immediately after using Flatpak for the Firefox app and restarting (because Firefox didn’t work immediately), it was clear that Abrowser now had several bugs that it never exhibited before…ever.

Abrowser began often not completing YouTube links (unless the page is refreshed), and also ‘hangs’ for an indeterminate time (sometimes with a brief “Not connected to internet” message), before finally loading a page from within YouTube (such as simply clicking the logo to go ‘home’.)

Uninstalling Firefox from Flatpak, and restarting the machine, does not correct the issue, so it seems clear that something ‘untoward’ has been done to the Trisquel OS system files.

I’ve not uninstalled Flatpak itself yet (only Firefox), but would very much appreciate specific instructions to recover the native OS files…(of course without reinstalling the OS from scratch.)

Reading more about Flatpak (unfortunately after the issue appeared), it is widely reported that there is no ‘true’ sandboxing for apps. So that’s my error for taking Flatpak to be as represented.

Still…may anyone please offer any way to restore Abrowser to it’s pre-Flatpak state (i haven’t noticed other OS issues so far?)

The only corrective attempts I’ve made so far are to uninstall Firefox, restart the machine, and also to attempt both reinstalling Abrowser (and uninstall/reinstall) from the native software manager. Neither of which worked.

Advise, please???

Thanks very kindly…

I’m going to close this topic as it has nothing to do with Flatpak.