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Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago"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.
- Zetobal 3y agoIt's the standard browser on many distros so if we just count installations it's probably true.
- lproven 3y ago[Author/submitter here] I know of a handful of distros that bundle Chromium (e.g. Q4OS) or Chrome (e.g. Linux Lite) but almost every Linux that provides a browser provides Firefox as the default, AFAIAA.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoOk, but it being bundled isn't the same as actually being used.
- loeg 3y agoYeah, but while Windows makes Edge the default, I think Chrome is still more popular there. It would not be terribly surprising if that was also the case on Linux.
- smallerfish 3y agoTangentially 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 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 IntelliJ, and that has issues in its Snap packaging according to the mighty Serge, so I'm switching to a tar.gz install for that.
- mistrial9 3y ago## 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 --purge snapd apt-get remove --yes snapd # This will prevent snapd from any repository tested on Ubuntu jammy
- lnxg33k1 3y agoThe hero we need, thank you!
- crabbone 3y agoWriting from memory, so might be a bunch of b/s... still. I'm afraid this isn't enough and something like apt-get update <something> can trigger full reinstall of Snap and a bunch of other junk installed with it.
- throw555chip 3y agoI've used the pin apt to prevent snap reinstalling approach on multiple machines for years with no recurrence of snap.
- gustavus 3y ago
- X6S1x6Okd1st 3y agoCertainly 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
- jillesvangurp 3y agoI've done that as well. These days I run on the beta channel. Haven't had a lot of crashes with either. With the beta channel, I tend to click the restart to update button once a week or so. On Arch linux, I ended up installing the tar.gz from mozilla and I let the browser update itself. Arch packaging is kind of redundant for this. It just adds time and middlemen that I don't want anyway. If there's a critical security update, it just increases the amount of time it takes for that fix to get to you. Regardless of whether you use stable, beta, or nightly. It does add a bit of hassle for e.g. getting a menu item with the correct icon in Firefox. I do the same with a few other things that know how to self update. That should work on Debian as well. But a .deb package from Mozilla is nice of course.
- alpaca128 3y agoI once used nightly for months to get a new feature earlier and 99% of the time it was as stable as the normal build.
- linuxontheweb 3y agoAhh... my two favorite tech-related subject matters: Linux distros and the politics of browser choice. I'm currently trying to invert this entire discussion by putting a well-oiled Linux distro inside of the browser [1]. [1] For whoever doubts that a proper Linux distro can be created through pure Javascript running in a browser, you obviously haven't tried out https://linuxontheweb.github.io/ https://linuxontheweb.github.io/ yet!
- theblazehen 3y agoHow does it work? What shell it is using? It doesn't seem POSIXy (eg I can't `echo $$` to see the shell pid), and the filesystem is pretty bare
- linuxontheweb 3y agoEverything is mainly just my own handcrafted Javascript. There is only one wasm module included so far (binjgb) to allow for the playing of gameboy games. I've previously tried to implement all of those sorts of POSIX-isms, but I've recently been wanting to make the tradeoff where code simplicity and understandability trumps all other considerations. Then, when others start coming on board the project, we can start making determinations about what kinds of "proper" shell functions to support. So, at this point, "bare yet dependable" is what I'm going for! You can actually get more feedback about the filesystem through the desktop interface. You can show an icon cursor by pressing the 'c' key, and then move it over a file icon. Then, just press the 'p' key to show the properties of the file. Help page here: https://linuxontheweb.github.io/www/docs/help.html https://linuxontheweb.github.io/www/docs/help.html
- qweqwe14 3y agoSorry but what I think you've done is just emulating a shell, not an actual Linux system. For that, you need to emulate some architecture that Linux supports, like x86/RISC-V/ARM. With that you should be able to boot a real Linux kernel. One guy even made a RISC-V emulator inside VRChat using a shader[1]. Doing it in JavaScript will probably be easier, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone has done that already. Until you emulate a CPU architecture and boot an actual Linux kernel, it isn't quite fair IMO to call it "Linux". [1] https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/ https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/
- qwerty456127 3y agoI've been using Firefox Nightly as my primary web browser at work for many years and have never encountered a problem except it annoys me with updating too often. I can see no difference from regular Firefox except Nightly supports more things.
- SanchoPanda 3y agoThose nags can be moderated or turned off by about:config flags or policy.json lines, I forget which at the moment. They used to drive me insane as well.
- perihelions 3y agoBrave has been taking the same approach for a while now (they package their own .deb, and run their own APT repo), https://brave.com/linux/ https://brave.com/linux/ Why doesn't Firefox also package their stable/release version this way? It's just nightly on this Mozilla repo, and extended-support (ESR) on the Debian-administered side. edit: Oh, the article answers this: - "Following a period of testing, these packages will become available on the beta, esr, and release branches of Firefox."
- gottorf 3y agoI use the "long-term support" version of any software whenever possible. On Debian, that's the firefox-esr package. I suppose I'm at the age where I no longer desire the bleeding edge.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoSame, especially when the bleeding edge tends toward fun stuff like "We changed the way the engine works entirely so none of your browser extensions work anymore!" RIP classic NoScript...perhaps it mostly works the same now, but when Mozilla updated Gecko (around Firefox 58 I think) they pared back what extensions were allowed to do for security reasons and NoScript had to change a lot before it could work.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stevekemp 3y agoI've run a Debian desktop system for the past decade (and more!) and for the past few years there's been a handful of packages I install from binaries/source locally. Having an up to date browser matters to me more than almost every other package. So I install the binary beneath /opt/firefox, and update it myself whenever a new release comes out. (I even created a simple "firefox-wrapper" package to point to the binary, and provide firefox to avoid any dependency issues and avoid the need to install two versions). Otherwise I think calibre, the arduino IDE, and the go toolchain, are the only binaries I've got deployed beneath /opt, as they have historically churned a lot too.
- stmblast 3y agoFirefox Nightly is awesome!
- ploxiln 3y agoI 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.
- jeroenhd 3y agoI'm on Ubuntu so I'm also using the tarballs. I wouldn't want to have to update it manually every time, though. Instead, I've extracted Firefox into ~/.local/opt/firefox and the auto-updater works as expected. I'll definitely switch to the apt distribution down the line, though. Package management is one of the main reasons why I use Linux in the first place.
- ploxiln 3y agoYeah, that's a fine choice, to also get the Windows/Mac self-update experience ... as a somewhat philosophical matter, I don't like apps that self-update, I prefer if it's mostly impossible for the app to modify itself, and reserved for some separate privileged mechanism. (So the apt package repo way is also good, given a trustworthy source providing the desired versions.)
- AnonCoward42 3y agoBeware that on Ubuntu the apt version is actually only a shim to the snap install. (Edit: at least on latest LTS and above and default repositories)
- Sander_Marechal 3y agoI think OP meant switching to the Mozilla APT when they offer stable alongside nightly. Not switching to the snap-ed Ubuntu version.
- blacksmith_tb 3y ago
- dyingkneepad 3y agoI 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.
- r9295 3y agoDebian regularly dispatches security patches in the form of updates for firefox/chromium. It's the same as running "apt upgrade"
- Sander_Marechal 3y agoDebian ships Firefox ESR, not Firefox stable. As a web developer I cannot work on just ESR.
- Sunspark 3y agoWhy not? I'm writing on ESR as I type this. The most current version of ESR is based on FF 115. The general release is 119. At this late date in web history, you shouldn't be dependent on some niche feature or implementation that only exists between 115 and 119.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoDev tooling moves pretty quick. I find a nice to have feature every other version release that makes life better. ESR's significant lag misses out on a lot of these.
- csdreamer7 3y agoAnd feature and standards support, when I was writing a web app using HTML5 video Firefox would freeze on Android. This was years ago. Thankfully do not have to worry about ESR for Android.
- arun-mani-j 3y agoWow I really needed this! So far I have been using the tar file from the website. Very nice it comes with auto-updates but some dependency issues can be difficult to debug. So a repository by Mozilla which ships the browser and integrates neatly into apt is a big "Thank you" from me. :)
- lproven 3y ago[Author/submitter here] Glad it helped someone!
- ingen0s 3y agoDebain is a way of life, thanks Mozilla
- Gabrys1 3y agoI think they're releasing nightly first as that's the newest and obviously pre-beta. Once that version is tested, they'll release a Deb for beta, then for the regular version. No big deal IMO.
- lakomen 3y agoThe author is an untrustworthy Ubuntu astroturfer who picks fights and insults his critics on the platform he publishes the paid articles he writes.
- lproven 3y agoThe author -- me -- rejects every one of those accusations. I am a former member of staff at both Red Hat and SUSE, and I have coming up on 30 years of experience on Linux across coming up on 100 different distros. Among the OSes on bare metal on my home machines are macOS, FreeBSD, RISC OS, ArcaOS, FreeDOS, PC DOS, Haiku, Oberon/A2, ChromeOS Flex, Q4OS, Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10... alongside Ubuntu and other distros. As for Ubuntu itself, as it happens, I thoroughly dislike GNOME and never recommend or use it. Among Linux distros which have been my full-time desktop platform were SUSE and Caldera OpenLinux. My laptops mostly run Ubuntu with the Unity desktop, with Snap packaging removed and disabled, but I am currently assessing a move to MX Linux. I've been using UNIX systems since 1988 and I still don't like it much. Case sensitivity is a pain, the shell is pointlessly arcane, and I am not a programmer -- not because I can't, because I can but I recognize that I'm not very good at it -- and don't really want an OS designed for programmers. My favourite OSes over a 41 years in computing so far were VAX/VMS, Acorn RISC OS, and Classic MacOS, although I was a keen user of IBM OS/2 2 for some years. I am a paid full-time member of staff at The Register, where I have been for 2 years today, as it happens. Before that, I freelanced for them from 2009. Before that I wrote for the Inquirer.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agoMX too bloated. Feel the power of ANTIX with RUNIT, run it RAM, setup some persistence on some storage in whichever way you like, disable and remove all the fluff like conky, use IceWM as WM, and zzzfm as filemanager, make it look nice, feel the insane speed. Remaster. Then this is yours. And stays that way, whith some remastering from time to time, due to updates, whatever. Giggle like a madman for not having to care about all the useless 'make work, make work!' anymore. Relax. Edit: While you're at it, deploy https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon / https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Profile-sync-daemon https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Profile-sync-daemon or something like that for FF. That's the icing on the cake, for FF not to access your /home , whereever that may be stored. Works wonders for Sideberry, and preserves your precious SSD. OFC that applies to any distro. Edit: s/Openbox/IceWM
- gitargy 3y agoNothingburger, running ESR is the only way I can depend on Mozilla not to break some feature on some random website I go to with every update.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoOf course it’s that site with the ridiculous title