Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#31

Post by gsnedders » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

comex wrote: post #20

rdtsc wrote: post #4

Really, a browser is now dependent on a particular Linux kernel? For example RHEL/CentOS 7 which was released just last year with at least a 10 year support ahead of it is now obsolete according to them because it has a kernel version 3.10... Not that many people are on desktop versions of those OSes, and those that are will not use Chrome (for example, US govt loves them some Desktop RHEL systems, but Chrome is usua…

Chrome isn't your average application, though - it pioneered the modern use of tight process sandboxes in general (in client-side applications, anyway), and in particular was the biggest motivating client for (and Kees Cook on Chrome OS Security wrote some of the code for) seccomp-bpf, the ~3-year-old sandboxing mechanism that allows precise control of permitted syscalls and syscall arguments. The incompatibility her…

Chrome did? IE7 shipped with pretty tight sandboxing in 2006 — and Chrome was only announced in 2008!

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#32

Post by colechristensen » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 5:56 AM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #17

Chrome "unofficially" dropped support for pre-3.16 kernels, such as the kernel in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, about half a year ago. More precisely, they introduced a bug that caused installing extensions to fail with that kernel, and then declined to fix it. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=401655 See comment #47: "Ok, while it sounds like this is technically a regression, I'm going to mark this as Wontfix…

7 months.

Linux 3.16 is 7 months old. The attitude of the Chrome team is extremely obnoxious. Some distributions support versions 10 years and beyond and there are plenty of reasonable reasons to want to use them as such. Requiring a 7 month old kernel is absurd.

I keep getting the feeling that Chrome isn't the browser for me.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#33

Post by skuhn » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:07 AM UTC

ryanprichard wrote: post #23

teraflop wrote: post #17

Chrome "unofficially" dropped support for pre-3.16 kernels, such as the kernel in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, about half a year ago. More precisely, they introduced a bug that caused installing extensions to fail with that kernel, and then declined to fix it. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=401655 See comment #47: "Ok, while it sounds like this is technically a regression, I'm going to mark this as Wontfix…

At least there seems to be a supported method for updating the 14.04 kernel: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#LTS_Hardware... Apparently, Ubuntu 14.04.2 installs a 3.16 kernel by default, and previous 14.04 installs can be updated by installing a bunch of "*-utopic" packages.

This seems like a colossal mess waiting to happen. I'm glad that I read their plan, so that I can completely avoid it.

The allure of Ubuntu LTS releases (currently 12.04 and 14.04) is the extended support cycle -- practically speaking the kernel is the biggest component of this for a lot of people.

If you use the 3.16 kernel (from Ubuntu 14.10) on 14.04, you are now on a 6 month support cycle [1]. One which doesn't even have defined dates (they're all still TBD). Now you have to keep running on the kernel upgrade treadmill to maintain support, moving to backported kernels from progressively newer Ubuntu releases every 6 months.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack#Kernel.2BA...

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#34

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:18 AM UTC

skuhn wrote: post #33

ryanprichard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least there seems to be a supported method for updating the 14.04 kernel: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes#LTS_Hardware... Apparently, Ubuntu 14.04.2 installs a 3.16 kernel by default, and previous 14.04 installs can be updated by installing a bunch of "*-utopic" packages.

This seems like a colossal mess waiting to happen. I'm glad that I read their plan, so that I can completely avoid it. The allure of Ubuntu LTS releases (currently 12.04 and 14.04) is the extended support cycle -- practically speaking the kernel is the biggest component of this for a lot of people. If you use the 3.16 kernel (from Ubuntu 14.10) on 14.04, you are now on a 6 month support cycle [1]. One which doesn't e…

[deleted]

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#35

Post by ars » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:23 AM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #18

redthrowaway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an exceedingly childish exchange.

I cannot believe these are the actual people responsible for Debian. Is this unprofessional attitude common in the Debian community?

That seemed unprofessional to me too.

But the problem for debian is that Jessie is frozen, they can't make any changes now. They don't want an exception for this.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#36

Post by adrusi » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:24 AM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #28

xai3luGi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what you mean by "unprofessional" here? Personally Google's business model seems to be the unprofessional thing in this conversation.

If Debian were a business and the original poster were one of their customers, how would the OP be feeling about that exchange? It's unprofessional by definition because it is so clear that the person responding does not consider this their profession.

But it's not a business and that person wasn't a customer. Debian is a community, bound partially by common technical ideas about packaging, stability and security, and partially by philosophical ideas about Free software.

Their goal is not to satisfy everyone who comes to their mailing list, that would be insanity.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#37

Post by honestthrowaway » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:31 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #7

jpgvm wrote: post #3

Replies so far for the lazy: On Sat, Mar 07, 2015 at 07:17:13PM +0200, Georgi Naplatanov wrote: > On 03/07/2015 06:38 PM, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > On Sat, 2015-03-07 at 16:09 +0100, D. F. wrote: > >> Hello, Julien Tinnes from google says that next releases of > >> chromium will drops support for kernels without TSYNC > >> ubuntu 14.10 already has been patched > >> Can I to expect that debian 8/jessie will have suppor…

That seems like an exceedingly childish exchange.

To be fair Google's whole business model is based on spying on people to gather data for ad placement. If we're being entirely honest a browser which sends every url you visit to Google by default is spyware.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#38

Post by yuhong » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:34 AM UTC

honestthrowaway wrote: post #37

redthrowaway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an exceedingly childish exchange.

To be fair Google's whole business model is based on spying on people to gather data for ad placement. If we're being entirely honest a browser which sends every url you visit to Google by default is spyware.

It is very off topic too.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#39

Post by zobzu » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:34 AM UTC

Wow that's extreme. They could broadcast seccomp across thread for older kernels.

One day it's going to be "use Google's fork of the kernel".

Of course, Firefox and others work fine on "older" kernels.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#40

Post by fpgeek » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 6:35 AM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #17

Chrome "unofficially" dropped support for pre-3.16 kernels, such as the kernel in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, about half a year ago. More precisely, they introduced a bug that caused installing extensions to fail with that kernel, and then declined to fix it. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=401655 See comment #47: "Ok, while it sounds like this is technically a regression, I'm going to mark this as Wontfix…

First, I'll note that plenty of people use Chrome without extensions. This issue wasn't a showstopper for any of them.

Second, you cut out the rest of the comment:

"If that causes great hardship for anyone and you want to do the work to figure out what's going on submit patches to fix it, I can provide pointers for where to start looking and code reviews for the patch."

Since that comment has anyone done anything other than updating their kernel and/or complaining? If not, why would the Chromium team think this issue was important?