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OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

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Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#211

Post by progval »

jcelerier wrote: post #199
progval wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't blame them. Firefox is a huge piece of software, and is updating every month . It's a bit shitty of Mozilla to expect every single distribution (most of which are run by volunteers) to package all their new dependencies and check everything works every single month.

but you can just use Mozilla's official binary packages, which are tested to work with a specific set of libraries, and I think are built with higher optimization levels (O3/pgo) than what distros conservatively do (O2) because of cargo-culting early-2000 gentoo forums (that was the case a few years ago, not 100% sure it is still the case today as I could not find easily the current release flags).

Mozilla doesn't provide binary packages for all architectures and OSs supported by Nix/NixOS

Maintainers also sometimes need to patch software to conform to their distribution's norm. For example, Debian patches it to accept extensions installed with APT.

And I'm glad distribution maintainers always recompile software themselves, it helps making sure:

1. binaries are really made from the open source code (I know, it's not bullet-proof)

2. it's actually humanly possible to actually compile it from source (my pet peeve in this area is Kafka: it's used everywhere, but no one seems to know how to actually fully compile it from sources anymore)

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#212

Post by nils-m-holm »

blackhaz wrote: post #14

I am arguing about this on FreeBSD forums - from an end user perspective. I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies. The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house - o…

> The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house [...]

> praying my Python and other projects survive [...]

And this is exactly why I never update. Every 10 years or so I go through the pain of installing a new version of the OS, mostly because the browser no longer works on most websites. But then, now that the web becomes more and more uninteresting to me, I might as well keep the current version until the hardware breaks down.

Security? Sure, but not at the cost of ruining half of my installed software on a regular basis!

If there was a statically linked version of BSD, I would switch to it in the blink of an eye.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#213

Post by sitkack »

progval wrote: post #190
microtonal wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may want to check out Nix. It's a package manager which isolates each program's dependencies; so you can have multiple versions of the same package. In principle true, yes. But it comes with a cost. Even the nixpkgs Firefox maintainers are considering to only ship Firefox ESR starting with NixOS 20.03: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/firefox-on-19-09-could-be-mark... https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/72126

I won't blame them. Firefox is a huge piece of software, and is updating every month . It's a bit shitty of Mozilla to expect every single distribution (most of which are run by volunteers) to package all their new dependencies and check everything works every single month.

This is a problem the package maintainers and the distros have brought on themselves!

They put countless hours into stitching roadkill into a complex quilt and then scoff at users who complain on the rotting stench.

They split packages from the creators into multiple pieces to meet their own idiosyncratic aesthetics. Firefox and other pieces of complex software should reside entirely in its own hierarchy. I have been using Linux and FreeBSD since 1997, SunOS and OSF/1 before that, this is good as it gets folks.

The only hope is Nix, OSX, Qubes and folks that care about progress. Everyone else is building ships in bottles.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#214

Post by sitkack »

stock_toaster wrote: post #202
Mirioron wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think containerization is going to be the future for applications in general. It would certainly make using different versions of Python easier.

Is containerization any better than static binaries for compiled apps (not talking about python/ruby/js apps here, but instead compiled ones like firefox)?

Many applications were never designed to be compiled entirely static, as much as I’d like that to be the case it isn’t possible.

Containerization satisfies the contract the application expects.

That is really the problem it fixes, dependency hell and dynamic linking.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#215

Post by rumanator »

tobias2014 wrote: post #144
celticmusic wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questi... ? > It is the user who is ultimately responsible for the stability of their own rolling release system. The user decides when to upgrade, and merges necessary changes when required. If the user reaches out to the community for help, it is often provided in a timely manner. The difference between Arch and other distributions in this regard is that Arch is…

This is funny, I could tell exactly the same story the other way around. I came as a 10+ year Debian user to Archlinux because it did too much automagic under the hood that broke and took a lot of time to fix. No breakage on arch because no automagic behind your back. For a long time before using arch I thought too that rolling release might be more unstable, but I have come to the conclusion that quite the opposite…

> I came as a 10+ year Debian user to Archlinux because it did too much automagic under the hood that broke and took a lot of time to fix.

This assertion makes no sense. Debian Stable has always the paragon of stability to the point that it's actually criticised for it. The Debian Testing release is even famous for being more solid than other distro's stable releases.

Breaking changes in Debian are practically only remotely possible in Debian Unstable or if you purposely install packages from backports or PPA repositories that have no assurance of stability or even maintenance.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#216

Post by kursus »

jcelerier wrote: post #201
bibyte wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it feels like I am living in an alternate reality. After I started using Arch Linux as my main OS I was fully prepared for it to break every few months. But it's been more then 2 years (maybe even 3 or 4 ?) and not one breakage. Also keep in mind that I update it every single day. From time to time I check the Arch Linux news site to see if anything needs manual intervention. So far I haven't needed to do a…

can confirm, went to arch linux due to constant breakage under Debian & Ubuntu, it's be so much more pleasant since then. No more everything exploding left and right as soon as I need a newer GCC or libav version.

That's funny because I've been running Debian Sid for 15 years as my main OS doing weekly updates and the two single cases of breakage I've seen were glibc6 transition (which was announced and expected) and proprietary video card drivers. You must be thinking of Ubuntu specifically.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#217

Post by floatboth »

rvz wrote: post #56
blackhaz wrote: post #14

I am arguing about this on FreeBSD forums - from an end user perspective. I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies. The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house - o…

Well the reality is, some developers of these complex software complain how their software ported to alternative OSes is difficult to maintain even when the BSD devs would offer to maintain it, which is why the BSDs are always on their own here in terms of porting, testing, packaging and updating the software in question. For example, Chromium. Any BSD developer would know that attempting to upstream their port there…

> Likewise for Firefox, which is why the BSDs don't get official releases

We mostly don't want official releases, we prefer our package managers.

Firefox is absolutely not like Chromium, Mozilla is very good at accepting patches and the upstream repo pretty much always works on FreeBSD. Just git/hg clone and ./mach build and here it is.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#218

Post by floatboth »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #82
blackhaz wrote: post #14

I am arguing about this on FreeBSD forums - from an end user perspective. I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies. The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house - o…

I have been interested in finding BSD users who are interested in https://nixos.org/nix/ or even a NixOS/kBSD. It solves all these problems and in my view is the continuation of the spirit of the port system. (The problem with bundling isn't disk space, but composition. Individual applications can compose fine, but libraries can't if they link other libraries at different versions, and use those library's types (ABI)…

Join #freebsd-nix on freenode. It's quiet here, but it exists.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#220

Post by lokedhs »

stock_toaster wrote: post #209
ChickeNES wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish NeXTsteps's app bundles had caught on outside of OSX.

AppImage[1] kind of works that way. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on more, tbh. I don't think it supports multiple architectures like app bundles can (fat bundles) though. [1]: https://appimage.org

One of my applications is distributed through Appimage. It works really well.

I really feel it should support containerisation in a similar way as Flatpak does. In my opinion, the idea that any application on your system can can touch all your files and access all your other applications is really problematic. You're always just one broken (intentionally or not) application form having your entire system compromised.

As best as I can tell, the only solutions that even tries to address this is Qubes OS and Flatpak.

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