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Because then you've just landed yourself in update hell. You'll need to take care of Firefox updates yourself instead of letting the distribution packaged updat
by thras 17y ago
Because then you've just landed yourself in update hell. You'll need to take care of Firefox updates yourself instead of letting the distribution packaged update system take care of it.
This is a real problem with running Firefox on corporate networks. The users don't have admin rights, so they can't click "Update" when Firefox wants to update itself. And administrators can't push the updates out through WSUS. Therefore, the most vulnerable vector on your computer (the browser) gets to remain in an un-updated state.
I think there is a group that repackages Firefox into msi format, which helps a lot. But as far as I know it's independent from Mozilla.
- nailer 17y agoWhat? There have been third party packages for Linux distros for years. As long as they're of suitable quality, there's no problem. Not every piece of software comes is Ubuntu or Fedora's default repositories.
- thras 17y agoIt's only a problem if your time is valuable and you are interested in running a reasonably secure box. My time is way too valuable to be used to read bugtraq and hunt down security patches for every piece of custom software I have installed on my box. Or, as is the case, hundreds of boxes.
- nailer 17y agoFirefox has an alert mechanism. If there's an update, that alert mechanism sends you to firefox.com, you get a new package for your OS. This already works for .exe and .dmg versions, there is nothing stopping it from also working for the .dpkg and .rpm versions.
- thras 17y agoIf you're running as a user with administrative privileges, as I believe I already pointed out. Our users don't, since they run on multi-user boxes.
- nailer 17y agoIf you had the permission to install the package in the first place, you have the permission to update it. In locked down environmentsthat case, the admins can supply the nice properly packaged MSI / dmg / rpm / dpkg version that Firefox provides to the users via their deployment tool.
- thras 17y agoOur users didn't install Firefox in the first place. We did. And we have to update it. It's damn annoying.