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posted by
LaminatorX
on Saturday October 25 2014, @02:41PM
from the whining-is-not-efficacious dept.
from the whining-is-not-efficacious dept.
A grave bug has been introduced into the "wine" package of Debian Jessie, just days before the November 5th freeze deadline. The /usr/bin/wine launch script fails with an "error: unable to find wine executable. this shouldn't happen." message.
Debian has already suffered much unrest lately over the inclusion of systemd, with threats of a fork being issued, along with the possible cancellation of the GNU/kFreeBSD port and the possible dropping of support for the SPARC architecture. After so much strife and disruption, can Debian afford to have such a serious bug affect such a critical package so soon before such a major freeze?
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Wine Fails to Launch under Debian Jessie, Just Days before the Freeze Deadline
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I don't want a pickle,
I just wanna ride on my motorsickle.
And I don't want to die,
I just want to ride on my motorcy.
Cle.
-- Arlo Guthrie
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:00PM
How exactly is Firefox "dead"?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:05PM
Well, a browser that has only about 11% of the browser market [caniuse.com], down from a peak of over 35% a few years earlier, with an ever-falling downward trend, is pretty much the definition of "dead".
Firefox was "ill" when it dropped from 35% to 30%. It was "dying" when it dropped from 30% to 20%. It was "dead" when it dropped below 20%.
It's losing existing users, without really gaining any new users. That means that there is no hope of recovery, which means that death has occurred.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:32PM
The word isn't dead, it's moribund. There have been recoveries from a moribund state, there have never, outside of fiction, been any recoveries from dead.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @08:50PM
It's safe to say that Firefox is dead. There's no way they can recover at this point, and even if they possibly could, everything so far indicates that Mozilla just isn't willing to attempt this.
Firefox is just going to remain dead. The last remaining users will bleed off soon enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:50AM
Has Netcraft confirmed it?
(Score: 1) by mathinker on Saturday October 25 2014, @09:57PM
Gee, I'd always associated "dead" with "not being actively developed", not something having to do with market share. So this means that increasing diversity in a particular application niche eventually causes all of the applications in that niche to "die", rather than being a reflection of healthiness?
That's just bizarre.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @10:44PM
What they are describing is a lack of genetic diversity. [wikipedia.org]
When you have a winner-take-all environment, really bad things happen. [wikipedia.org]
It's amazing how we don't learn from the past. [wikipedia.org]
Monocultures are not something to be admired.
Straight-line first-past-the-post capitalist "thinkers" are so boring.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @11:04PM
Firefox has no future. That's the same as being dead. It doesn't matter how many developers are working on it. If nobody actually uses it, and the number of users left is indeed approaching zero, then it's a dead project. Firefox is meeting that criteria.
(Score: 1) by mathinker on Sunday October 26 2014, @07:10PM
Nah, it's just pining for the users!
(It seems that humor is a more worthwhile reply than trying to actually reason with a post which just reiterated the points I addressed rather than actually adding something to the conversation.)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:22PM
They've spent years doggedly courting new users who were never interested, while in the process alienating their existing user base. Very much like GNOME.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:23PM
This, a thousand times over. Gnome went through every contortion possible to make their environment more "accessible," yet they never made it more productive, just changed what was visible (and removed useful things). Firefox tries to lure in people who are already using another browser, and they do so mainly with eye candy rather than the features that draw people to Chrome (or even Safari).
They both lost sight of the purposes that they originally served, and they went chasing after the ghosts of popularity rather than trying to be the best at fulfilling their purposes. Kind of like if Microsoft gave up on Windows and Office and decided that the future was in smartwatches, tablets, and phones -- it would be a fucking disaster.
As much as I hate agile/scrum bullshit, this is why user-stories exist. Developers should keep in mind what they are designing and stick to that use case.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday October 25 2014, @05:47PM
The problem with Firefox, at least in my eyes, is that it hosts all tabs in a single process. A bug could allow a compromised tab peak at the memory of another open tab, say your banking site. That right there is a big vulnerability and why I switched to Chrome. Plus who here hasn't had a tab take out the whole browser? Another annoying FF problem. I liked the simple interface of Chrome, syncing ability and better HTML 5 support (back when it was the new kid on the block). I never looked back. However, I do use FF on older, low memory systems that cant deal with Chromes high memory usage. And that of course, is my only beef with Chrome, it loves memory. But on modern desktops with 4+GB RAM, it is a non-issue.
As for the multi-process feature of Chrome, the FF team is working on it: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox [mozilla.org] Maybe one day I will switch back.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:16PM
mod up +100000. Multi-process is the only sane way to have a browser that faces the internet!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @10:40PM
Electrolysis [google.com]
For the adventurous, it's been available for a while. Nightlies [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @11:10PM
We've been hearing that Electrolysis will be available "soon" for a long time now. Like since mid 2011 [mozilla.org]. It still isn't here yet, as we're about to enter 2015. Face it, Elecrolysis is a failed project. Even if they manage to get it into a stable release, they'll still have lagged Chrome by many, many years. That's a total failure.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:37PM
While a problem, that's not what's hurting Firefox. What's hurting Firefox is trying to coerce desktop users to use the same interface that they think will work well on a tablet, or possibly on a phone.
If they'd just revert the GUI to last year's (or the year before) and concentrate of fixing programming problems things would be much better. If they need a mobile version, have that GUI run out of a totally separate design group. Once you have two good versions, then you can refactor the commonalities, but don't break the working one while chasing after a new market share.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday October 25 2014, @07:25PM
Agreed on the UI part. I recently installed FF on an XP system with 1GB RAM. I haven't used FF in a while and I was surprised to see that it copies Chrome's UI. And to me, it is a blatant rip-off. I would rather they fix their bugs and other niggling issues before trying to copy other peoples UI's and optimize for the tablet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @07:37PM
Copying Chrome's UI wouldn't be a problem if Chrome's UI was good. But it isn't. It's total shit, too.
Firefox used to offer a decent UI, but poor performance. Chrome offered a shitty UI, but excellent performance. Now Firefox offers a shitty UI, and poor performance. Chrome still offers a shitty UI, but excellent performance.
So given that Firefox is bad in both respects, and Chrome is at least good in one, sensible Firefox users have moved to Chrome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @08:18PM
I consider myself sensible, and I resist Google on all fronts.
I've tried seamonkey, ice weasel, and am now settled on pale moon when doing new installs.
With a 3rd party compiling of pale moon for XP/Server 2003 OSes, it is now my browser of choice for anyone that is creeped out about everything they hear about personal data, or the company store (no matter whose loyalty they have sworn fealty to), etc.
Firefox clearly sold out on themselves and the userbase, even if they made nothing inherently obvious by driving their users away. I can't think of any person I know that uses it--except for perhaps the ESR version 24.5, and only because they have disabled the updating and don't surf the web much. I also do not know anyone that switched from Firefox to Chrome.
People I know/work with already either refused to use Chrome or already had it. I would even pay a modest fee to license a copy of some real firefox and keep the faith alive. I am doubting that will ever be an option; they already are getting funding to do what they are doing which nobody likes. I doubt they will get funding to do something different.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 29 2014, @06:25PM
I can crash my Chrome install almost on demand. I switched back to Firefox because Chrome was crashing a few times a day. Sometimes a few times an *hour*. On the other hand, I can go months between crashes with Firefox. There's only one website I've encountered that causes Firefox to crash, and it only happens if I leave that site open for several days. I'm not going to name the site, it's one I use private browsing for ;)
Of course, in a couple months I'll probably hit some snag with Firefox and go back to Chrome. I tend to switch browsers every few months, although Firefox has been working well since Australis. I don't get why that gets so much hate either -- that and Cyanogenmod are the only things I've ever wanted enough to install a nightly build!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 29 2014, @07:01PM
Interesting experience. Chrome has been pretty damn stable for me and this is on multiple systems. AMD, Intel, Windows 7, and Linux. It always works. The only issues I had was the updater crapping itself every once in a rare while but it just fixed itself. One thing to add, I always close Chrome every few days. Not purposely, but after a while I don't have a need to keep it open and I close it.
I think the main allure that got me hooked on Chrome early was the minimal UI and HTML 5 (no more flash for youtube).
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:07PM
Yeah, it's actually only on my work system that Chrome does that, but it's damn annoying. After using it for a while it'll enter a state where damn near any link I click causes the whole browser to crash. For some reason I suffered through that for at least a month before finally switching to Firefox. I do use Chromium along with Firefox on my home system and that doesn't have the same problems, although I don't notice it being any *more* stable than Firefox either.
I do suspect part of the problem is that I rarely close my browsers. I even have Firefox in my initrc file. And I have them remember the previously open tabs, so even when I close (or crash) the browser there are still tabs that I've had open probably since I bought my computer (gmail for example). I actually do this with most programs though -- once I open Kate or Chromium or Dolphin, they're not getting closed either until I need to reboot! :)