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Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

theregister.com

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Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#71

Post by crabbone »

smallerfish wrote: post #4

Tangentially related, Firefox-from-snap completely broke for me recently in a way that I couldn't be bothered to diagnose ("error: cannot communicate with server: Post http://localhost/v2/snaps/firefox : dial unix /run/snapd.socket: connect: no such file or directory"). It prompted me to finally wipe Snap fully from my system and install Firefox from the Mozilla PPA. The only other Snap app I currently use is Intelli…

Recently had to configure a Linux laptop for someone and they chose Ubuntu for it.

Snap was one of the first things I removed (was a tough fight though). This way of software management is outright hostile to personal computers (as in run by people, as in contrast to servers, mostly run by other programs).

There were some problems with the version from Mozilla PPA though too... cannot recall at the moment. I think some configuration was missing right after install.

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#73

Post by regularfry »

ploxiln wrote: post #23

I was running debian stable for the last few years (until a few days ago, due to a brand new laptop ...) and was perfectly happy with the Firefox linux build tarballs: 1. untar as root into /opt 2. symlink /opt/firefox/firefox to /usr/local/bin/firefox 3. compose a 13-line firefox.desktop and put in ~/.local/share/applications/ Only the first step needs to be repeated when there is a new release.

There used to be a not-inconsiderable speed benefit to building your own binaries, which I don't remember being that hard. Don't know if that's still true.

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#74

Post by crabbone »

mistrial9 wrote: post #5
smallerfish wrote: post #4

Tangentially related, Firefox-from-snap completely broke for me recently in a way that I couldn't be bothered to diagnose ("error: cannot communicate with server: Post http://localhost/v2/snaps/firefox : dial unix /run/snapd.socket: connect: no such file or directory"). It prompted me to finally wipe Snap fully from my system and install Firefox from the Mozilla PPA. The only other Snap app I currently use is Intelli…

## app-conf/apt/nosnap.pref # To prevent repository packages from triggering the installation of snap, # this file forbids snapd from being installed by APT. Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 ### Remove snapd applications and service snap remove --purge firefox snap remove --purge gnome-3-38-2004 snap remove --purge gtk-common-themes snap remove --purge bare snap remove --purge core20 snap remove --pu…

Writing from memory, so might be a bunch of b/s... still. I'm afraid this isn't enough and something like apt-get update can trigger full reinstall of Snap and a bunch of other junk installed with it.

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#75

Post by ravenstine »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #27

I think web browsers should be the exception to Distro's "stable" release rules. Browsers do not work at all like every other package. There are so many security implications, everything is so complex that I really think having whatever is the newest release is actually the most stable strategy. New releases tend to be pretty stable considering how much testing they get everywhere.

Browsers prove that stable distros for the desktop are a failed approach. It's one thing for stable server distros because the goal there should be software that changes infrequently and only needs to be updated with security patches most of the time. For desktop Linux, a user can and should be able to install and run lots of complicated code frequently. A browser is running and doing all sorts of complicated and arbitrary things all the time, sometimes like an OS in and of itself, and that's just one piece of software the user is running.

I've never had a problem running an "unstable" or "testing" version of a Linux distro.

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#76

Post by alpaca128 »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #7

Certainly agree it's not intended to be for everyone, but I haven't noticed many crashes running nightly. Would be nice to go to print with numbers

I once used nightly for months to get a new feature earlier and 99% of the time it was as stable as the normal build.

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#77

Post by JohnFen »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #27

I think web browsers should be the exception to Distro's "stable" release rules. Browsers do not work at all like every other package. There are so many security implications, everything is so complex that I really think having whatever is the newest release is actually the most stable strategy. New releases tend to be pretty stable considering how much testing they get everywhere.

Personally, I don't want a nightly release of a browser (or any other software). Not because of stability or bug concerns, but because I don't want my software to change often. I strongly prefer long-term releases, and even then tend to put off updating for as long as I can get away with. Updates are pain unless they're security-only ones.

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#78

Post by almatabata »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #27

I think web browsers should be the exception to Distro's "stable" release rules. Browsers do not work at all like every other package. There are so many security implications, everything is so complex that I really think having whatever is the newest release is actually the most stable strategy. New releases tend to be pretty stable considering how much testing they get everywhere.

Given that web browsers have snuck into tons of applications nowadays with electron the list becomes quite a lot longer. The Webp fiasco also showed just how critical it is to keep all your electron applications up to date (https://blog.cloudflare.com/uncovering-the-hidden-webp-vulne...).

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#79

Post by e2le »

Almondsetat wrote: post #53
ploxiln wrote: post #23

I was running debian stable for the last few years (until a few days ago, due to a brand new laptop ...) and was perfectly happy with the Firefox linux build tarballs: 1. untar as root into /opt 2. symlink /opt/firefox/firefox to /usr/local/bin/firefox 3. compose a 13-line firefox.desktop and put in ~/.local/share/applications/ Only the first step needs to be repeated when there is a new release.

> compose a 13-line firefox.desktop and put in ~/.local/share/applications/ And that’s where the problem lies. Apt has great documentation, creating .desktop files and their syntax? Not so much

Setting Firefox as the default browser will force it to generate a .desktop in "~/.local/share/applications/".

Re: Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly

#80

Post by uxp8u61q »

Zetobal wrote: post #3
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #2

"Considering that it remains the dominant web browser for Linux" Is this actually true ? These days I use FF as my primary browser, but that's recent after a conscious (ethics driven) choice to switch. I kinda got the impression most people are just installing Chrome after install.

It's the standard browser on many distros so if we just count installations it's probably true.

I guess Edge is the dominant web browser on Windows, then.
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