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Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives

#52

Post by bee_rider »

I wonder if they’ll keep this up permanently.

Tempted to switch (maybe I can remove my system’s Snap infection), but redoing bookmarks and extensions (and getting my ublock config and OneTab bookmarks) is a pain. And I’ll have to figure out how to not lose my passwords this time.

What a pain.

Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives

#54

Post by olyjohn »

michaelt wrote: post #43
aquova wrote: post #21

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.

* In the ancient past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Ubuntu distributed Firefox as a .deb * 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 mos…

Yeah the Snap package is still annoying. Like every day it pops up and tells me to close Firefox to update it. So I close it, and then nothing happens. Then I wait, and nothing happens. Occasionally, it notices that I closed Firefox and applies the update. But it's a frustrating annoyance.

Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives

#56

Post by sfink »

mobilemidget wrote: post #51

They write "advanced compiler-based optimizations"; I guess that doesn't fall under open source?

Think of it more as "we compile with -O3". If you installed with the .tar.bz2, you'd get that already. If you use a 3rd party produced .deb, they might build with -O2.

That's just an example; the blog is probably referring to PGO and/or LTO: profile-guided optimization and link time optimization, which require some fiddly setup that I believe third parties have traditionally not bothered with.

And yes, it's all open source. You can see all of the bits that go into producing that .tar.bz2. You can even see the full build log if you like, eg by going to https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=mozilla-release&sea... . Pick your platform, click on Bpgo, click on B, select the "log" link down in the lower left.

There are plenty of Mozilla-related things to complain about, openness of the browser development process is not one of them.

Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives

#58

Post by marssaxman »

Symbiote wrote: post #47
wkat4242 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Disabling auto-updates on Ubuntu/Debian is, obviously, just a configuration option.

What is that option? I would love to disable firefox auto-updates.

Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives

#59

Post by sfink »

Aissen wrote: post #33

I have been using Mozilla builds of Firefox on Linux for years, and they tend to just be higher quality. They talk about the performance engineering that goes in the build process briefly, but IMHO stability is also improved. It's also updated on restart (see the About window), so you never get issues because changing the libs that can be dynamically loaded right from under a program is never a good idea. My only wis…

I see linux/aarch64 builds at https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=mozilla-release&sea... so it seems like they exist. Maybe they aren't packaged for apt?
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