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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

#281
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, when does anything break in Ubuntu LTS if you don't do a dist-upgrade? There's nothing to break if nothing changes. And the minor version upgrades along the years have not broken anything on any of my installs. Arch on the other hand ...

> Huh, when does anything break in Ubuntu LTS if you don't do a dist-upgrade? That's a fist-full of caveats. Arch is willing to upgrade the kernel, maybe you should include a dist-upgrade in the comparison.

And that is precisely what you should not. The dist-upgrade is something you can plan for and set time aside for. The risky rolling mini upgrade every couple of weeks you can not. That is a huge difference!

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

#282
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh, when does anything break in Ubuntu LTS if you don't do a dist-upgrade? That's a fist-full of caveats. Arch is willing to upgrade the kernel, maybe you should include a dist-upgrade in the comparison.

And that is precisely what you should not . The dist-upgrade is something you can plan for and set time aside for. The risky rolling mini upgrade every couple of weeks you can not. That is a huge difference!

> The dist-upgrade is something you can plan for and set time aside for. The risky rolling mini upgrade every couple of weeks you can not.

I can plan for it? You can see if you're upgrading your kernel. Nothing breaks if you decide not to run an upgrade.

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s great on a personal level, but bigger picture, aren’t we going about this the wrong way? If most people are using containers because “applications were never designed to be compiled entirely static”, developers should start designing their applications so they can be compiled entirely static.

It is an unfortunately hard problem that would take agreement by thousands to fix. Thus containers.

In pre-history this tool worked ok for some things, I don't believe it still functions on modern systems.

http://statifier.sourceforge.net/

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

#284

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 devs that complain about <1gb of space over an important piece of software are living in the early 2000s still. They haven't figured out a terabyte on disk is worth about $30, with ssd terabyte at $100.

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

#285
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is precisely what you should not . The dist-upgrade is something you can plan for and set time aside for. The risky rolling mini upgrade every couple of weeks you can not. That is a huge difference!

> The dist-upgrade is something you can plan for and set time aside for. The risky rolling mini upgrade every couple of weeks you can not. I can plan for it? You can see if you're upgrading your kernel. Nothing breaks if you decide not to run an upgrade.

And then I sit with a hopelessly old system I dare not to touch because I dread the day I have to do that kernel update or that one update that pulls in a new libc, leading to an upgrade orgy. I have seen that plenty of times.

This nonsense is why stable and LTS releases were introduced in the first place.

If I'm faced with a major upgrade of an LTS system, I usually choose to reinstall from scratch, shedding packages I haven't needed for a long time with it. But that happens every couple years or so.

If you're okay with hitting the forums now and then to find out why your desktop has been behaving oddly the last two weeks, rolling is your thing. You won't have to break in your new dist-upgraded or freshly installed system for like two weeks.

If you don't want to play lottery every time you hit enter for that update or if you're a business where you can't afford possibly breaking all your laptops for some security update, stable is your only option.

It's "choose the best tool for the job" I guess.

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

#286
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 It's funny, from your point of view having a centralized repository with a (usually) single (usually) latest version of a lib…

What they should do is have a centralized repository of packages but allow multiple versions that function independently. That way nothing breaks when one program installs a newer version.

That would require exponential amounts of binaries.

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

#287
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I only ran Ubuntu a few times. My worst breakages were on debian (generally testing). I remember the mysql packages completely killing my apt as well as grub updates wreaking havoc as two individual examples.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Changing the system default GCC version, like it seems you did, is not good practice in environments with conservative package policies. There's also no need to do that, since nobody prevents users from installing newer versions alongside old ones, and invoking them directly. Even not considering the fact that different GCC versions can coexist, complaining about this breakage in absolute terms doesn't make any sense…

> Libav has also been deprecated in Ubuntu long ago, so it's not clear what you refer to

I'm referring to the libav* libraries which are part of the ffmpeg project (not the horribly-named libav fork) - and external debian repos providing updated version of those (due to better codec support in media players, etc) such as debian-multimedia

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> Kafka

Name checks out...

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

#290
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see, when you said "break", I thought you meant because of a bug or other error, but now I guess the fact that it needs configuration and learning how to do that configuration is what you're calling broken. Certainly, Arch is definitely not a "it just works" OS. It's a tinkerer's OS. Different distros favor different types of users. By what you said, probably something like Ubuntu or Mint is better, something that…

Why respond in this dishonest manner? When I left Arch I had been using it for over 10 years. I probably still understand it better than you do. Is your supposition that a "misconfiguration" just "happened" randomly over night? No, it's a rolling release distribution, software on it will break randomly on updates. You need to read their FAQ, even their official document will tell you this happens and it's not their r…

What's dishonest about it? I'm trying to understand the issues that you mean, and the need to configure before getting to work is what I understood you to mean as broken. I'm not talking about misconfiguration; that's different. You emphasized that if you couldn't get straight to work then it was broken. When I can't get straight to work, it's because I need to configure something. I'm using "configure" to mean any sort of maintenance on the machine itself that doesn't involve "real work".

If that's not it, then I've no clue anymore about what you mean as broken.

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