41–50 of 176 posts
The missed the key 5th benefit: Allows you to sudo apt-get purge snapd without annoying unwanted consequences.
Is there more technical information than this article provides? Did Firefox not have a .deb package until now? It's been a few years since I used Ubuntu, but I find that really surprising. I'm not sure what this new package is or how it differs.
What Mozilla is calling out here is a seperate, Mozilla-direct repo. This means you skip the official repos.
Everyone should think carefully about what this means.
Is there more technical information than this article provides? Did Firefox not have a .deb package until now? It's been a few years since I used Ubuntu, but I find that really surprising. I'm not sure what this new package is or how it differs.
* Recently (well, in the last 2-4 years) to boost the uptake of Canonical's "snap" packaging system, Ubuntu switched to only distributing Firefox as a snap.
* There are a lot of snap haters around. Not least because canonical fucked up the update mechanism in the first year or two, had a bunch of performance problems (now mostly solved?), and made a bunch of weird broken snaps for things like docker.
* An unofficial firefox package for Ubuntu was then created, so people who didn't want to use the snap could avoid doing so.
* By some accounts, Mozilla is keen on controlling the entire release channel, so security updates don't have to wait on volunteer maintainers. (IDK if this is true or not, but I've heard second-hand claims)
* This new package lets Mozilla release to users directly, and lets snap haters avoid snap without using unofficial packages.
> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
I don't see what the point of this is.
> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
As a welcome coincidence I checked the version right now and the Help, About Firefox dialog showed me an updating status. There is a updates/0/update.status file in Firefox directory that had the "downloading" content. It's "applied" now. The update.version file contains "122.0" and there is a 20 MB file names "update.mar". The file "last-update.log" contains many "PREPARE PATCH", "EXECUTE PATCH", "FINISHED PATCH" lines on shared libraries file and other files. Apparently the new version is waiting in the updated/ directory.
The About dialog still reports 121.0.1 and has a "Restart to update Firefox" button. I'll wait to see what happens and how long I can keep using the current version before having to switch to the new one.
> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
It does that on FreeBSD as well yeah. Not a huge deal for me as I only install updates when I'm not in the middle of things. I love an OS that doesn't force me to do anything <3
Is there more technical information than this article provides? Did Firefox not have a .deb package until now? It's been a few years since I used Ubuntu, but I find that really surprising. I'm not sure what this new package is or how it differs.
Depending on your distro, the Firefox package you see in the official repo is ... well packaged by the repo maintianers and some distros will include customizations like adding in bookmarks to the distro's welcome/docs/pages/etc. Sometimes even more things like feature settings are changed. It is usually not anything major and usually things that you might prefer like disabling pocket, etc. What Mozilla is calling ou…
The missed the key 5th benefit: Allows you to sudo apt-get purge snapd without annoying unwanted consequences.
As a user of the PPA packages ( https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa ), now I'm confused. Are these the same packages? Should I switch? I'd have appreciated at least a mention in the article.
From what I can tell, the “Ubuntu Mozilla Team” does not consist of people from Mozilla but rather just people packaging Mozilla software for Ubuntu. The latest packages in that PPA have been uploaded by Rico Tzschichholz, who does not appear to be affiliated with Mozilla.
Kudos to open source maintainers, the hidden heroes who make your life easier while expecting nothing in return.