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Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 End of Life
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Nov 16, 2008 09:44 AM
from the out-with-the-old dept.
from the out-with-the-old dept.
vm writes "According to Mozilla and other sources, Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 will soon be left behind some time in mid-December. The end result: no future security or stability updates. This will affect Thunderbird 2, SeaMonkey 1.1, Camino 1.5, and any other projects based on Gecko 1.8. So, if you haven't already upgraded, there's no time like the present."
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FF 3 in portage (Score:2, Funny)
Time for the Gentoo Portage people to mark Firfox 3 as stable!
Re: (Score:2)
I think 3.0.1-r1 is current for the binary (please correct me if I'm wrong! Haven't synced my desktop Gentoo install in a while...).
Not great for everyone I know, but it's probably better than using Firefox 2.
Re: (Score:2)
How do they manage to get FF3 to be unstable? It crashes very seldom for me on Ubuntu, Debian and Mac OS X. Sure the history browsing is a lot slower now days, but still fairly usable on older computers.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think he meant putting FF3 in the stable branch. I haven't synced for a while but if you did a normal "emerge mozilla-firefox" you'd get FF2. You have to explicitly say you want FF3 to get it. Then if you did an "emerge -vu world" it would of course, replace FF3 with FF2.
BTW, that's a shit tonne of compiling : /
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Anyway I don't want to upgrade so I shouldn't have to. How hard is it to backport security updates? It's not like gecko itself has security vulnerabilities.
I don't care if th
Re: (Score:2)
The girlfriends machine had a lot of random crashes with all versions of Firefox up until 3.0.4 came out. (Yes, on Gentoo)
Since then not a single problem. At all. And she's been using it since day of release.
A simple 'emerge --sync --quiet && emerge -u =mozilla-firefox-3.0.4' (assuming you have it unmasked) will solve that issue.
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Bah. Why did I type that '-u'? Ignore the '-u'. :-)
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I'm a Gentooer myself, but I don't go round claiming things like that are simple. That road leads to madness. Specifically, the person whose box I've just installed Linux on gets mad at me.
Re: (Score:2)
[successful_troll.jpg]
can't stop from replying...
open terminal
"aptitude install firefox"
or
open gui package manager
search firefox
select firefox
click install
done
Much better than:
open web browser
search firefox
go to web site
click download link
wait for download to finish
run exe
click through installer
done
gentoo was never meant to be simple
Re: (Score:2)
While that is the case for Gentoo, it is intended to be for hardcore Linux geeks. Apt or RPM based distros such as Redhat, Mandriva, or Ubuntu make it nice and easy to install - go to your package manager, search for "firefox", select "Firefox 3", and click "Install" (or "Apply") and when it's finished, the software has been installed.
That's nicer and more consistent (only one place to look) compared to finding and installing some Windows software. I'm not going to try to pretend that everything is easier
Re: (Score:2)
Oh really? I'm using FF3 on Gentoo x64 right now, I and haven't seen it crash in months. Hell, since a week or two ago I'm even running 3.1beta2, also without crashes so far.
So, anything more than personal anecdotes on your side?
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So, anything more than personal anecdotes on your side?
That would be a fair comment if you hadn't countered with nothing more than your own personal anecdote.
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I was expecting this kind of response, and it would only seem fair...if I was the one making some out-of-the-blue claim that a certain piece of software is totally unstable on a platform I happen to use. I do not recall any outcry on the Gentoo forums regarding stability of FF3.
So really, it's not up to me to prove that FF3 works on Gentoo, it's the OP's task to show me that there actually IS a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Has this bug (453964) [mozilla.org] been fixed yet ? According to the bug tracker, no one has even bothered looking at it, since it's still "unconfirmed".
Oh well. I guess I'll stay on Firefox 2, then. Or see if I can get IE running under Wine...
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The bug won't be fixed until it is confirmed. It isn't confirmed until it is reproducible on more than one machine. It works fine on the two machines sitting in front of me. Don't get me wrong, it pegged my 3Ghz processor at 100% for about 30 seconds, which would normally be unacceptable, but the page isn't exactly a common format (5400 lines of different font'ed links). So I can't see why they would consider it top priority.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The more cynical part of me wonders if the reason to terminate support for Firefox 2 is to simply force everyone to upgrade.
Of course it is. You don't even need to be cynical. What other reason makes sense? From their point of view supporting two versions takes more resources.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The more cynical part of me wonders if the reason to terminate support for Firefox 2 is to simply force everyone to upgrade. It's a bit too close to The Microsoft Way for comfort...
As Raenex said, they want to stop supporting FF2, because it is almost twice as much work when fix needs to be merged. This required developers to stay familiar with twice as much code. They don't get any money from 'forcing' you to upgrade to get the newer fixes. You don't fail a registration.
I agree, regressions should be fixed. My point was that this bug is an inefficiency in rendering a HORRIBLY designed web page. It is this that causes it to be a low priority; nothing to do with glitz/bling/&
Thunderbird (Score:5, Interesting)
Thunderbird 2 is effected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.
Is this is a death sentence for the project?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is a Thunderbird 3 in the works (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page [mozilla.org]).
They are currently headed for Beta 1 (see the latest status meeting notes at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/StatusMeetings/2008-11-11 [mozilla.org]); the nightlies can be downloaded from the usual place (http://www.mozilla.org/developer/#builds) if you want to take a look.
Re:Thunderbird (Score:5, Insightful)
Even so, it is poor practice to end support for one of your products when its successor hasn't even been released yet.
Parent
Re:Thunderbird (Score:5, Informative)
Thunderbird 3 is under development [mozillamessaging.com]. An alpha version is available.
Parent
Re:Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems very odd.
I can't see Thunderbird 3 coming out before next year, so how can Mozilla put the current official product (TB 2) 'out of support' before release of the next version? Not to mention that customers will need a reasonable transition time to test 3.x in their own environments, before they migrate from 2.x to 3.0, which would call for TB 2 'support' for several months after the launch of TB 3.
Just like with Firefox, for example.
Or is the TB team going to maintain gecko 1.8 solely to support TB 2.0.x until 3.0 is out (and, hopefully, somewhat beyond that)?
That would make sense, but is a big drain on TB resources.
Or is this tantamount to saying that TB is a dead-end product, not worth Mozilla's time and effort??
Parent
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Thunderbird 2 is effected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.
Is this is a death sentence for the project?
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/#tb3 [mozillamessaging.com]
Looks like you're in luck.
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There, fixed your grammar for you.
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My affect was effected by the the affect of discontinuing progress on Firefox 2.
egads.
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No. Thunderbird 3 is under heavy development, and Thunderbird 2 will continue to receive security updates, even when Firefox 2 won't.
.. cite? admittedly, haven't dug much past TFAs mentioned in the /. story but nothing i saw in those links says 'tbird will be an exception for security fixes.' and moving to an alpha (or even beta?) version of tbird3 is not an acceptable path for a stable codebase in place today.
-r
(and yes, i would like some cheese with that..)
(and i wish i had a lawn for you damn kids to get off of..)
linux ff3 stability? (Score:3, Interesting)
alas, the first time i tried cutting to ff3 on the linux side of my home pc (dual-booter) it was a nightmare.. constantly crashing/hanging, etc. it's wasn't the prereleases either.. it was 3.0 or 3.0.1. bad enough i actually reverted back to 2. i was just thinking of taking another stab at movin' on up.. just hope it's more solid and not as painful.
-r
Re: (Score:2)
self-replying... just dropped 3.0.4 back on my box (fwiw, i'm slackware) and so far so good. i wish i could specifically remember what finally drove me to downgrade... just remember it being a piling-on of things (like mplayerplugin was unstable + freezing + occasional spontaneous app-close and the like) and i just quit fighting it...
we'll see how it goes..
-r
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It won't actually affect SM, TB, e.a. that much (Score:4, Informative)
Panther Users (Score:3, Interesting)
This is kind of a concern, Mac OS X 10.3 is still alive and well out there. Somewhere along the line they cut 10.3.9 from the supported OSes for FF3, so now its 10.4 and up only. Now while I don't expect the 2.x branch to have any security compromising problems, the establishment dogs who's only job it is to demand that every possible security thing is addressed will start grousing. And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.
Re:Panther Users (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, iCab [www.icab.de] and Opera [opera.com] are still supporting 10.3.9.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
They haven't been grousing about the fact that Apple hasn't released security updates for 10.3 in months? About the fact that the latest(and almost certainly last) version of Quicktime for 10.3.9 has numerous security holes?
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Can't find it on Apple's site, but I'm pretty sure 10.3.x is unsupported and receives no security updates.
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While your point is well taken, QT 7.4.5 got a security update in April and it included 10.3.9.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1241 [apple.com]
Well I hope Thunderbird 3 comes out soon... (Score:3, Informative)
Left Behind: An Open Source Movie. (Score:2)
"So, if you haven't already upgraded, there's no time like the present."
That's why one should upgrade to [insert commercial software here] version before it's too late.
Seamonkey 2.0 is not yet even in beta (Score:3, Insightful)
Seamonkey 2.0 is not yet even in beta (there are alpha releases available). The previous versions of Seamonkey (1.1.*) are based on Gecko 1.8. There are plans to get Seamonkey 2.0 into beta "Real Soon Now" but that probably won't be until Firefox 3.1 goes gold.
A bit of a shame since Seamonkey is the logical inheritor of the the old Netscape feature set and look-and-feel, but done right (and with far fewer bugs). It even has a WYSIWYG HTML editor that works much like the old Netscape editor, except that it very rarely (if ever) crashes - Unlike Netscape, in which it was always a gamble whether you'd be able to get anything done in the composer before Netscape crashed and you'd lose all your work.
Yeah, it's open to the criticism of being a prime example of the Swiss Army knife approach to software design - but in fact it does many of these things quite well, often better than specialized applications. For example, although there are a few other open source WYSIWYG HTML editors out there, virtually all of the others have died on the vine at this point.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They will no longer receive upstream support or bug fixes.
Re:too bad for my employer (Score:4, Informative)
We use Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 at work. The GTK libraries are too old to build Firefox 3, and SLES 11 is not coming out for a few months.. I guess our local admin will have to seriously consider ditching SLES, its general obsolescence is becoming a problem lately.
But in any case, I can't understand the decision of ending support for Firefox 2 just 6 months after having released Firefox 3, this is too short for some distributions to respond.
Parent
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It does seem peculiar. I don't know what lead to this decision, but we're using SLES for desktops instead of SLED. I don't think it's wrong, just a bit peculiar.
Anyway, SLED has the same issue too.
Re:too bad for my employer (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the issue with Firefox/Mozilla. They seem to ignore the enterprise requirements, how companies do things etc. As result, IE enjoys its kingdom on Windows desktop.
For example, while entire thing is documented, even open source package makers exist, they refuse to ship MSI packages. MSI is the Windows Native installer. It is not so different from shipping tar.gz to Redhat Enterprise and expect those sysadmins sit and convert them to RPM. It is same deal on OS X too while OS X doesn't have that many enterprise users. Normally, a .pkg should be provided.
Here is the entirely open source maker for MSI files coming from MS employee directly. (No moonlight/mono deal)
http://wix.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
No, Windows admins won't monkey around 2000 terminals to run "setup.exe" files. Some guys spare significant amount of time building their own MSI files just to satisfy Firefox fans.
If you can't run FF3, you better convert to Konqueror or Opera if they really stop security updates. Firefox is really popular and lots of 2.x users still exist. Black hats will sure use that advantage.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Please don't be silly. It is entirely possible that this policy is reducing the numbers of enterprises that are adopting Firefox, but I know for a fact that at least one enterprise has accepted this, so your claim is trivially shown to be false and everything you say thereby becomes suspect.
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FF 3 has a number of improvements over 2 for enterprise deployment, and I believe more are planned for future releases.
Re: (Score:2)
Give it some time. Your reaction is a common one, but not everyone who starts off hating it stays that way. I should know; I went from hating it, to accepting it, to finding it really quite useful on occasion.