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Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

bugs.debian.org

11–20 of 155 posts

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#11
post #10
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$deity no, then I'd have to rebuild servers every year instead every two/three :/

I have been just doing dup on OpenSUSE for over 6 years without a single issue. :) I am getting rusty on rebuilding server skills. Debian's update system does drive me nuts, but I have never run a Debian server for longer then 6 months.

Considering the last distro upgrade had Apache going from 2.2 to 2.4, which introduced considerable changes to the config file format, "upgrading the servers" is not something that can be done in _all_ cases.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#12
post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

Literally right below that it says: "To address this packaging issue, once a ESR cycle is over, Debian has been accepting uploads of new ESR releases in the stable release."

As in, they accept and release new versions from upstream instead of maintaining their own fork with backports.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#13
post #12
post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

Literally right below that it says: "To address this packaging issue, once a ESR cycle is over, Debian has been accepting uploads of new ESR releases in the stable release." As in, they accept and release new versions from upstream instead of maintaining their own fork with backports.

But most users don't want the ESR version, they want the latest non-ESR version, yes, you can go and get it from mozilla but some users find this inconvenient.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#14
post #3

Related: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555935 Also, Debian is really lacking some more modern bug management / issue tracking system. It might be useful to provide e-mail interface for it, but I fail to see why it also can't be managed from some site at the same time instead of limiting it to read only view.

Although GitHub Issues has a lot of issues, for the singular reason that you can opt-in and opt-out of notifications on particular subjects I find it vastly more useful than most bug trackers.

Is there a good open-source GitHub alternative that implements this feature?

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#15
post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

If you don't like the 2 year release cycle, use Ubuntu, which is Debian-based. Debian maintains such long release cycles because the tolerance for bugs and incompatibilities are smaller than other linux distros. For long-lived applications or applications that have long planning periods Debian is ideal. NASA uses Debian, because their projects are measured in years, have low tolerances for bugs, and are developed to last 5+ years. Simply put, Debian's release model is for a different use-case than your typical web development project

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#16
I don't understand why Debian has anything to do with Firefox. Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released and how often? Isn't this the whole point of using free, open source software? To be able to choose your own components? Why do we need Debian bundling Firefox?

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally right below that it says: "To address this packaging issue, once a ESR cycle is over, Debian has been accepting uploads of new ESR releases in the stable release." As in, they accept and release new versions from upstream instead of maintaining their own fork with backports.

But most users don't want the ESR version, they want the latest non-ESR version, yes, you can go and get it from mozilla but some users find this inconvenient.

Then they can get it from outside the stable branch. Testing and unstable both have a Iceweasel 44, and there is the mozilla repository at http://mozilla.debian.net/ just for mozilla software.

Debian stable is "conservative and with as few changes as possible", so the ESRs are the obvious choice for it.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#18
post #15
post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

If you don't like the 2 year release cycle, use Ubuntu, which is Debian-based. Debian maintains such long release cycles because the tolerance for bugs and incompatibilities are smaller than other linux distros. For long-lived applications or applications that have long planning periods Debian is ideal. NASA uses Debian, because their projects are measured in years, have low tolerances for bugs, and are developed to…

[deleted]

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#19
post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

Debian implements the comical definition of Bureaucracy really well. Missing the forest for the trees and thinking that every single piece of software is built and released the same way. For a Linux distro that has been around so long, it's mind boggling they still don't understand that. Wine used to have the same problem - Wine's cycle had the Chrome-like cycle before Chrome even existed. Release every 2 weeks like…

> Release every 2 weeks like clockwork.

Which means exciting new regressions every two weeks! When I used wine it was definitely the case that certain applications(games) worked better with specific wine versions so a continuous release cycle could result in breaking a working application. That's something users of stable are trying to avoid.

If a user wants the latest version of a package you can always install it manually.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#20

I don't understand why Debian has anything to do with Firefox. Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released and how often? Isn't this the whole point of using free, open source software? To be able to choose your own components? Why do we need Debian bundling Firefox?

Package Managers. In Debian the package manager (and repositories) is the app store.
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