241–250 of 339 posts
Is there a better alternative to Firefox? Of all the browsers it seems like the "least bad" choice (above Chromium, and other proprietary browsers) and I use it, but is there something safer, simpler, and more secure?
The only true alternative I see on the horizon is https://servo.org/ from Mozilla, but it's still a work-in-progress.
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 think that there is in general no technical problem to have multiple versions of the same library installed (files in /usr/lib are versioned anyway and for other data the libraries can be compiled with prefix including version).
Then, package system could handle different major/minor versions of libraries as different entities, handle upgrade of major/minor versions through dependencies from installed/upgraded packages, and only upgrade library directly for patch-version change (i.e. security bugfix).
In such setup, there would be several instances of a popular library installed on a system, but not say hundreds partial instances statically compiled-in to applications. And it still allows simple updates of libraries for patch fixes.
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thankfully I said Ubuntu and not Debian.
Ubuntu has _more_ magic that breaks a lot more frequently in less expected ways than Debian.
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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…
They first time I tried Arch, I installed it, did a system update and libc completely broke and my system was unusable. I went back to Gentoo. I went through some hell when I ran Gentoo unstable(~) but for the past several years I've been on Gentoo stable and have very few issues. I've even used it on work laptops at three different companies. It is definitely more of a do-it-yourself distro than Arch for sure, but I…
I actually appreciate that Gentoo is set up to allow me to run that command if I want to.
But I did move off of Gentoo due to constant dependency conflicts. They took forever to deal with and they were pretty well guaranteed to happen whenever you didn't hold to a strict and frequent update schedule.
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This has to be one of the most inaccurate memes of all time. To counter with anecdata: I've been running Arch Linux testing repositories for over a year now with no issues whatsoever.
That's awfully nice for you. But my experience was horrible every single time I've tried Arch. The main problem is, every time you choose to update you have to brace yourself for possibly wasting another hour to repair the subtle breakage the new package version of some minor piece of software introduced. I had Arch on a laptop I used for my freelance business once and took notes of the time spent on maintenance. So…
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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.
ndiswrapper was the main cause back in the day, shockingly giving Windows drivers access to the Linux kernel can cause problems. The most recent time was when VDPAU was new and I was trying to get HD video playback working on a mini-PC with an nVidia Ion GPU by running a version of the nVidia driver much newer than Ubuntu packaged. Now that I think about it that must have been around a full decade ago.
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That's awfully nice for you. But my experience was horrible every single time I've tried Arch. The main problem is, every time you choose to update you have to brace yourself for possibly wasting another hour to repair the subtle breakage the new package version of some minor piece of software introduced. I had Arch on a laptop I used for my freelance business once and took notes of the time spent on maintenance. So…
How long ago was your experience? That might be a factor. I have been using Arch for a long time, and if my memory serves, stability was a bigger issue years ago than it is now. These days, I have found Arch to be really solid.
However, I come from a business perspective here. You really don't need an operating system that introduces new versions on a whim in the middle of operations. There's a reason businesses run RHEL/Centos or macOS and whatever has LTS in Windows land: cost of maintenance and reliably wide windows of no possible breakage.
As a business, it's kind of a dodgy position to be at relying on "yeah, randomly upgrading versions worked for me so far. Fingers crossed, lol".
So I'm interested in what people use their Arch Linux for and what didn't work for them on any other stable platform. My personal observations point towards the Arch Linux users being the tinkerers who like to use cutting edge and hose their Debians trying to wedge some newer version into it. While the ones that ran screaming away from Arch pretty much never had the desire to change the underlying system and were happy with a security backport now and then.
The problem seems to be one of command line interface. In the C/C++ world, you specify the language version using a flag passed to the compiler. e.g. -std=c++98 In most other programming languages, you specify language version by installing multiple copies of the compiler/interpreter and running the corresponding version. The C/C++ way works fine if your language spec is updated once every 3 years. It does not work f…
https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/edition-guide/editions/cre...
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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…
But their 'idiosyncratic aesthetic' helps navigating. In the mozilla world, they know their aesthetics ('not invented here'), because its their everyday job and can always work hands on and naturally can be faster. While in the distribution world, where a lot of software comes together, its good that i can find everything in common/familiar places. Not easy to find a good middle ground and still supporting progress.
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…
Would it be possible to run Firefox in it's own jail? All of my FreeBSD boxen are servers, so I don't have any experience with this but... put your crustier apps in containers so they don't poop in your main sandbox. Works for servers