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Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

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Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#31

Post by NuSkooler »

zdragnar wrote: post #24
SushiHippie wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, the major stakeholders of the Linux desktop – KDE, GNOME, the various major distributions – would get together and seriously consider a plan of action. The best possible solution, in my view, would be to fork one of the major browser engines (or pick one and significantly invest in it), and modify this engine and tailor it specifically for the Linux desktop. Is it really the best solution to crea…

Mozilla has boatloads of money, but they don't seem keen on increasing investing in FF- if anything, cutting servo seemed quite the opposite. To me, Mozilla is like the Wikimedia foundation- they take in a lot of money, but it seems like very little actually goes to the projects people think of when they hear the name. Maybe that isn't a bad thing- surely there are worthy projects they could be investing in, in addit…

I'm confused. I get a new Firefox version on my Windows, Android, and Linux machines consistently, with new features, fixes, and the latest web tech minus the privacy nightmares Google is trying to feed, at a regular basis. How are they not investing in FF?

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#32

Post by cassianoleal »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #19

To be fair, its still got plenty of warts on OS X too. After all this time, putting Firefox in full screen mode results in seriously wonky & intolerable behavior. Its the only app I have that shifts all its chrome (toolbars, tabs) when you bang the top of the screen. Compare this to Safari (only the menu shifts). No, hiding all of it is not the solution.

That doesn't happen to me at all. What happens is that the menubar shows, and the top bar of the browser (where the back/forward buttons and the URL bar are) slides down to give space to the window bar (with the zoom and close buttons) over the top of the browser.

That's all. All the content, sidebar, etc stays stationary.

It's true that Safari does it better, but honestly not by much.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#33

Post by mixmastamyk »

They should fire most of the overhead personnel and sock their salaries into income producing investments, so when big G closes the tap, R&D can continue indefinitely.

Hopefully then they’ll stop reinventing tabs, ruining privacy, and focus on the aforementioned bugs.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#34

Post by tmtvl »

geophile wrote: post #14

Can someone knowledgeable comment on the possibility of VivLdi becoming the de facto standard browser for Linux? I played with it a little, thought it worked well, and most notably, it worked well for websites that gave Firefox trouble.

Very low chance: it's another Chromium browser but with proprietary modifications. I think Chromium proper would become standard before Vivaldi.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#35

Post by nine_k »

userbinator wrote: post #26
nine_k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Firefox and Linux user, I do see that problem. Hardware video acceleration is fine now, and apparently has been for some time. But e.g. Google Meet plainly refuses to blur the video call background when run on Firefox. It happily does that when running in Chromium.

Have you tried changing user-agent header or similar? I'm not familiar with your specific example but have encountered plenty of sites which complain about "not supported" but work fine when UA header is the "right" one.

I have, and it did not work last few times :(

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#36

Post by 7e »

marcodiego wrote: post #15

Together, Linux + ChromeOS (much closer to standard GNU+Linux than Android) have something between 6% and 7% of the desktop. I don't remember people saying the same about MacOS when it was around that mark. Of course, we must be realistic. Linux around 6% is very different from MacOS at 6%. In that case, they already had support from items people complain to this day about Linux not having; main examĺes are msoffice…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...

This has it at 5.1%. But ChromeOS has a lot of corporate mojo making it work. It’s only partially open source. A lot of the good bits are closed. So that puts Linux at 2.91%. A rounding error. For 30 years.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#37

Post by devit »

That's obviously infeasible (either it would be bad or it would cost too much time/money).

However, maintaining a variant of Ungoogled Chromium or Vanadium targeted at desktop Linux would be feasible.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#38

Post by TillE »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #19

To be fair, its still got plenty of warts on OS X too. After all this time, putting Firefox in full screen mode results in seriously wonky & intolerable behavior. Its the only app I have that shifts all its chrome (toolbars, tabs) when you bang the top of the screen. Compare this to Safari (only the menu shifts). No, hiding all of it is not the solution.

The only real complaint I have about Firefox on macOS is that fullscreening a video takes forever. Safari does it twice as fast and with a smooth animation instead of blanking the screen.

Otherwise I find the experience on Windows and Mac very similar.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#39

Post by thayne »

politelemon wrote: post #16

To compare, how is Chrome or Chromium's attention to Linux Desktop, in terms of features and fixes?

It depends. IIRC chrome/chromium had support for video acceleration on linux long before Firefox. And had better support for WebRTC using pipewire on linux. OTOH chrome's support for native wayland lagged far behind Firefox.

Re: Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem

#40

Post by thayne »

tmtvl wrote: post #34
geophile wrote: post #14

Can someone knowledgeable comment on the possibility of VivLdi becoming the de facto standard browser for Linux? I played with it a little, thought it worked well, and most notably, it worked well for websites that gave Firefox trouble.

Very low chance: it's another Chromium browser but with proprietary modifications. I think Chromium proper would become standard before Vivaldi.

Being proprietary it can't be part of the Debian destribution, and the license might be problematic for other distros to include as well.
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