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Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

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Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#51

Post by KaiserPro »

jfoster wrote: post #27
username223 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you commit to a 10-year support cycle, you'd better be prepared to backport quite a few things. OTOH, when you make a break-the-world release every six weeks, you can expect lots of breakage when dealing with the rest of the world. From what I can tell, Google pushed a feature they wanted into Linux, then didn't bother to think about backward compatibility. This would be fine if Chrome weren't force-updating s…

Chrome doesn't force-update on Linux. You can just install it and not accept any updates.

And if you don't upgrade you get moaned at by gmail et al until you do.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#52

Post by honestthrowaway »

delroth wrote: post #45
honestthrowaway wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google invented sandboxing in client apps? I don't know who's more arrogant - Google or their fawning fanboys.

Calling comex a "fawning fanboy"? That's ballsy for a throwaway account.

Claiming that Chrome pioneered sandboxing doesn't pass the smell test, irrespective of how many Google employees (according to your profile) are backing you up.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#53

Post by teraflop »

fpgeek wrote: post #40
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 oth…

I don't think the other half of that comment affects my point: that the Chrome team is declining to fix bugs that only manifest on older kernels, and hence it's reasonable to call those kernels "unsupported".

I agree that it's the Chrome team's prerogative to decide that supporting those kernels is unimportant.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#55

Post by pjmlp »

wtallis wrote: post #16
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…

When you commit to a 10-year support cycle, you'd better be prepared to backport quite a few things. Google's being aggressive about taking advantage of a kernel-level security feature that they developed to solve a real problem. This seems like a good thing overall.

And then people wonder why normal users go for Windows and Mac OS X systems for their desktops.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#56

Post by honestthrowaway »

bcook wrote: post #54

Some browsers have different goals. Is that a problem?

It's supremely arrogant to tell your users to change the kernel they are using because you couldn't be bothered to fix a regression in your code. The problem with that approach is self-evident.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#57

Post by vanzard »

zobzu wrote: post #44
comex wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 certainly didn't pioneer anything. Google devs brought seccomp-bpf to the kernel, which is a simpler alternative (but also not always as useable) to many other mechanisms. Chrome is one of the first products on linux with a large amount of users to support a reasonably strong sandbox. But that's not what pioneering means. Of course, seccomp-nonbpf, selinux and quite a few other mechanisms have been around for…

What comex meant is Chrome pioneered the use of seccomp-bpf. And indeed, Chrome is by far the application using seccomp-bpf in the most advanced way.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#58

Post by yuhong »

honestthrowaway wrote: post #52
delroth wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling comex a "fawning fanboy"? That's ballsy for a throwaway account.

Claiming that Chrome pioneered sandboxing doesn't pass the smell test, irrespective of how many Google employees (according to your profile) are backing you up.

But do you know who comex is? People sometimes are not exactly precise and sometimes make mistakes too.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#59

Post by jfoster »

adrusi wrote: post #36
jfoster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but most people would consider the original poster's request as quite reasonable.

Instead of considering it in a balanced way and producing a polite & considered response, the response was idealistic rhetoric. For better or worse, I think that does qualify the attitude of response as "unprofessional", as stingraycharles pointed out.

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