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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

#81

Post by justincormack »

nandhp wrote: post #11
ars wrote: post #5

Can someone say what TSYNC is? Googling it did not help me, lots of links, but none that said what it actually is.

It looks like a "thread-sync" feature for seccomp. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1379020 http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-J... seccomp ("secure computing") is an application sandboxing mechanism in the Linux kernel (since 2.6.12, 2005-03-08). seccomp allows a process to make a one-way transition into a "secure" state where it cannot make any system calls except exit(),…

It is the seccomp type 2 mechanism, where you choose the system calls and arguments to allow, not the early seccomp type 1 that only allowed exit, read. That one would not really need to sync, as you cannot even create threads afterwards.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#82

Post by justincormack »

zobzu wrote: post #39

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.

It is a sandbox, you cant trust the threads to apply it I guess, if they have been hacked.

I dont understand why you need to change the seccomp filter after creation though.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#83

Post by icebraining »

teekert wrote: post #74

Perhaps it is a good things. Many kernel devs aparently don't like the method of back porting fixes for ages the way Debian does. They say the Arch way is fine and one should not be too afraid to upgrade in between. Perhaps Debian could start trying this? In other words, is the Debian stable method still needed in this day and age? Perhaps a good start for a discussion.

Debian has had the "Arch way" before Arch, it's called Unstable :) Personally, I like running that on my laptop and Stable on my server, since I like being able to fix security issues without suddenly having some component replaced or new functionality introduced that breaks the system and requires my intervention. Add unattended-upgrades, and I can essentially leave it running alone for months, if not years.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#84

Post by snnn »

cookiecaper wrote: post #78
colechristensen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

7 months is too short, but 10 years is too long to go for a workstation, which is where Chrome would be used.

What about Windows XP? It still holds more than 50% Chinese market.

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#85

Post by izacus »

reidrac wrote: post #69
colechristensen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without defending Chrome team here; when a distro provides long time support (say > 1 year) I don't think is upstream responsibility to support the packages for that period of time. If the distro is upgrading the browser package I think that may break the API/ABI stability that a long time support distribution should provide, so I can't see why this is a Chrome problem. Also it sounds wrong that a web browser depends…

I'm sorry, but we ARE talking about arguably the most important piece of software running on an end-user device not being supported on a less than ONE YEAR old distribution. Not 5 years, not 15 years. Less than a year.

The result of your argument is basically returning to dark ages of having to support old broken IE6 because the vendor couldn't be arsed to support an older platform. When did dropping support for a less than a year old product become something to be applauded?

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#87

Post by ryannevius »

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.

Wouldn't comex be the "Google" in the comment, rather than the "fanboy"?

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#88

Post by e12e »

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.

I don't really think this is a particularly childish exchange. But either way, it struck me that when you consider the reason for the exchange: a unilateral decision made by Google -- that kind of reminds me of how Google handles support: they don't.

On another note - does chrome/chromium build on freebsd? Is there an equivalent api there?

I certainly sympathize with the chrome/chormium team: they're of course free to abandon users on old kernels/os'. It is a bit odd to demand a new kernel (newer than most Android installs uses) for a browser. We've come to learn to live with not having stable and secure browsers (choose either - usually choosing the updated, secure browser makes more sense). It's a bit more hairy when you need a new kernel. But I suppose newer hardware can just run Chrome (or chrome os) in a kvm vm anyway...

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#89

Post by kasabali »

This is not the first time that Chromium team doesn't care about even slightly older distros. Apart from the infamous RHEL 6 case, there is also the recent wheezy case.

Back in September, there was a plan for requiring at least GCC 4.9 for building Chromium, which made building new releases for Debian wheezy in a pure Debian wheezy environment impossible. [0]

Debian lacks the manpower of RedHat for backporting and supporting new software (which is GCC 4.9 for this case), so Stable Release Team and Security Team are not the most liberal teams when it comes to approving new packages into a stable release, and as a result, Chromium is not supported in Wheezy as of last month. [1]

[0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=763278

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2015/msg00...

Re: Google Chromium drops support for Linux 3.16 and earlier

#90

Post by scottlinux »

jrockway wrote: post #75

I don't think Chromium has dropped support for kernels It appears a patch needs to be cherry-picked back; a pretty common task for people that maintain older kernels. It's very common to backport patches to drivers you care about (because new kernel versions always introduce bugs in your obscure hardware, you only backport stuff that doesn't already work). There is even a system for doing it in an automated manner: h…

Google has backported this to ChromiumOS

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=430588

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