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>There is lack of support in the upstream Linux kernel, toolchains, and web browser Except firefox who become useless on 32 Bit after quantum I don’t have any

by pmarin 7y ago

>There is lack of support in the upstream Linux kernel, toolchains, and web browser Except firefox who become useless on 32 Bit after quantum I don’t have any problem with Debian on my netbooks. I am really curious about the “lack of support” in the kernel, Any idea?

listic 7y ago
What happened to Firefox Quantum?
- pmarin 7y ago
  Many things, none of them good if you have 2 Gb of RAM, 2 cores and no graphics acceleration. Chromium works really well in this kind of hardware specially with javascript blocked.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    My understanding is that FF Quantum works just fine even on as little as 1GB RAM. (In fact you can make it usable on as little as 512MB, but only with some swap usage.) Chrome/Chromium is a lot more RAM-hungry in my experience.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Huh? I've used Firefox Quantum in a VM with 512mb of RAM, it works acceptably on simple sites.
    - pmarin 7y ago
      My real usercase experience is not the same. None of the modern web browsers are really usable with 512 mb.
      - diffeomorphism 7y ago
        So how is this related to firefox quantum? It was not a "modern web browser" before that?
      - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        Note, I meant really simple sites. Stuff like Hacker News, and the basic html version of gmail.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      I remember the glorious days when firefox was not a memoryhog. 700MB for hundreds of tabs. Nowadays it needs 2GB because of the awful multi process model.
      - seba_dos1 7y ago
        At least it's not as bad as Chromium's one, which is unusable on machine with 8GB RAM with hundreds of tabs.
szbalint 7y ago
Talking about Firefox, I've recently heard some people getting annoyed that Firefox now depends upon Rust and Rust doesn't build on their obscure legacy platform. I'm in turn getting annoyed at the complete lack of cost/benefit analysis that this entails. Every software project has to deal with limited resources and the attitude that the vast majority of people running on more mainstream platforms should forsake improvements (in security or usability by Rust for example) in order to support Solaris, Illumos, HP-UX or any of those niche platforms, well that just pisses me off. I still have a 32bit Debian installation (originally installed around 2003 and been Ship of Theseus-d over the years so it actually has 64bit hardware now) that I didn't have the time or motivation to upgrade, but if 32bit support would go away tomorrow I'd understand. What's the percentage of 32bit vs 64bit users? 0.3%?
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  The other way to view this is as rich software developers asking the rest of the world to pay to upgrade their hardware, or else forgo security patches. That may be hard if you're in a poor country, or are otherwise living near the poverty line. Commercial interests have little incentive to serve this demographic, due to their lack of buying power. That leaves open source projects that were created for the public good.

by pmarin 7y ago

listic 7y ago

What happened to Firefox Quantum?

pmarin 7y ago
Many things, none of them good if you have 2 Gb of RAM, 2 cores and no graphics acceleration. Chromium works really well in this kind of hardware specially with javascript blocked.
- 0815test 7y ago
  My understanding is that FF Quantum works just fine even on as little as 1GB RAM. (In fact you can make it usable on as little as 512MB, but only with some swap usage.) Chrome/Chromium is a lot more RAM-hungry in my experience.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Huh? I've used Firefox Quantum in a VM with 512mb of RAM, it works acceptably on simple sites.
  - pmarin 7y ago
    My real usercase experience is not the same. None of the modern web browsers are really usable with 512 mb.
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      So how is this related to firefox quantum? It was not a "modern web browser" before that?
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      Note, I meant really simple sites. Stuff like Hacker News, and the basic html version of gmail.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    I remember the glorious days when firefox was not a memoryhog. 700MB for hundreds of tabs. Nowadays it needs 2GB because of the awful multi process model.
    - seba_dos1 7y ago
      At least it's not as bad as Chromium's one, which is unusable on machine with 8GB RAM with hundreds of tabs.

szbalint 7y ago

Talking about Firefox, I've recently heard some people getting annoyed that Firefox now depends upon Rust and Rust doesn't build on their obscure legacy platform. I'm in turn getting annoyed at the complete lack of cost/benefit analysis that this entails. Every software project has to deal with limited resources and the attitude that the vast majority of people running on more mainstream platforms should forsake improvements (in security or usability by Rust for example) in order to support Solaris, Illumos, HP-UX or any of those niche platforms, well that just pisses me off. I still have a 32bit Debian installation (originally installed around 2003 and been Ship of Theseus-d over the years so it actually has 64bit hardware now) that I didn't have the time or motivation to upgrade, but if 32bit support would go away tomorrow I'd understand. What's the percentage of 32bit vs 64bit users? 0.3%?

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
The other way to view this is as rich software developers asking the rest of the world to pay to upgrade their hardware, or else forgo security patches. That may be hard if you're in a poor country, or are otherwise living near the poverty line. Commercial interests have little incentive to serve this demographic, due to their lack of buying power. That leaves open source projects that were created for the public good.