Does Desktop Linux Have a Firefox Problem? (osnews.com) 164
OS News' managing editor calls Firefox "the single most important desktop Linux application," shipping in most distros (with some users later opting for a post-installation download of Chrome).
But "I'm genuinely worried about the state of browsers on Linux, and the future of Firefox on Linux in particular..." While both GNOME and KDE nominally invest in their own two browsers, GNOME Web and Falkon, their uptake is limited and releases few and far between. For instance, none of the major Linux distributions ship GNOME Web as their default browser, and it lacks many of the features users come to expect from a browser. Falkon, meanwhile, is updated only sporadically, often going years between releases. Worse yet, Falkon uses Chromium through QtWebEngine, and GNOME Web uses WebKit (which are updated separately from the browser, so browser releases are not always a solid metric!), so both are dependent on the goodwill of two of the most ruthless corporations in the world, Google and Apple respectively.
Even Firefox itself, even though it's clearly the browser of choice of distributions and Linux users alike, does not consider Linux a first-tier platform. Firefox is first and foremost a Windows browser, followed by macOS second, and Linux third. The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer. The best and most visible example of that is hardware video acceleration. This feature has been a default part of the Windows version since forever, but it wasn't enabled by default for Linux until Firefox 115, released only in early July 2023. Even then, the feature is only enabled by default for users of Intel graphics — AMD and Nvidia users need not apply. This lack of video acceleration was — and for AMD and Nvidia users, still is — a major contributing factor to Linux battery life on laptops taking a serious hit compared to their Windows counterparts... It's not just hardware accelerated video decoding. Gesture support has taken much longer to arrive on the Linux version than it did on the Windows version — things like using swipes to go back and forward, or pinch to zoom on images...
I don't see anyone talking about this problem, or planning for the eventual possible demise of Firefox, what that would mean for the Linux desktop, and how it can be avoided or mitigated. In an ideal world, the major stakeholders of the Linux desktop — KDE, GNOME, the various major distributions — would get together and seriously consider a plan of action. The best possible solution, in my view, would be to fork one of the major browser engines (or pick one and significantly invest in it), and modify this engine and tailor it specifically for the Linux desktop. Stop living off the scraps and leftovers thrown across the fence from Windows and macOS browser makers, and focus entirely on making a browser engine that is optimised fully for Linux, its graphics stack, and its desktops. Have the major stakeholders work together on a Linux-first — or even Linux-only — browser engine, leaving the graphical front-end to the various toolkits and desktop environments....
I think it's highly irresponsible of the various prominent players in the desktop Linux community, from GNOME to KDE, from Ubuntu to Fedora, to seemingly have absolutely zero contingency plans for when Firefox enshittifies or dies...
But "I'm genuinely worried about the state of browsers on Linux, and the future of Firefox on Linux in particular..." While both GNOME and KDE nominally invest in their own two browsers, GNOME Web and Falkon, their uptake is limited and releases few and far between. For instance, none of the major Linux distributions ship GNOME Web as their default browser, and it lacks many of the features users come to expect from a browser. Falkon, meanwhile, is updated only sporadically, often going years between releases. Worse yet, Falkon uses Chromium through QtWebEngine, and GNOME Web uses WebKit (which are updated separately from the browser, so browser releases are not always a solid metric!), so both are dependent on the goodwill of two of the most ruthless corporations in the world, Google and Apple respectively.
Even Firefox itself, even though it's clearly the browser of choice of distributions and Linux users alike, does not consider Linux a first-tier platform. Firefox is first and foremost a Windows browser, followed by macOS second, and Linux third. The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer. The best and most visible example of that is hardware video acceleration. This feature has been a default part of the Windows version since forever, but it wasn't enabled by default for Linux until Firefox 115, released only in early July 2023. Even then, the feature is only enabled by default for users of Intel graphics — AMD and Nvidia users need not apply. This lack of video acceleration was — and for AMD and Nvidia users, still is — a major contributing factor to Linux battery life on laptops taking a serious hit compared to their Windows counterparts... It's not just hardware accelerated video decoding. Gesture support has taken much longer to arrive on the Linux version than it did on the Windows version — things like using swipes to go back and forward, or pinch to zoom on images...
I don't see anyone talking about this problem, or planning for the eventual possible demise of Firefox, what that would mean for the Linux desktop, and how it can be avoided or mitigated. In an ideal world, the major stakeholders of the Linux desktop — KDE, GNOME, the various major distributions — would get together and seriously consider a plan of action. The best possible solution, in my view, would be to fork one of the major browser engines (or pick one and significantly invest in it), and modify this engine and tailor it specifically for the Linux desktop. Stop living off the scraps and leftovers thrown across the fence from Windows and macOS browser makers, and focus entirely on making a browser engine that is optimised fully for Linux, its graphics stack, and its desktops. Have the major stakeholders work together on a Linux-first — or even Linux-only — browser engine, leaving the graphical front-end to the various toolkits and desktop environments....
I think it's highly irresponsible of the various prominent players in the desktop Linux community, from GNOME to KDE, from Ubuntu to Fedora, to seemingly have absolutely zero contingency plans for when Firefox enshittifies or dies...
Fork it? (Score:5, Informative)
The FF source code is OSS, so if enough are frustrated with FF's management, then there's probably enough interest to maintain a fork. Even the threat of a fork may shape them up alone.
Similar happened with MySql and Oracle: MariaDB was forked from it because Oracle are slimeballs.
Re: Fork it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Fork it? (Score:5, Informative)
First: Pale Moon is awesome. I'm using it right now. It had some serious web compatibility problems for about a year, but those problems were fixed a few months ago.
Like Firefox, Pale Moon is a cross-platform but Windows-first browser. However, unlike the article's author, I don't think that's a problem, for Firefox or Pale Moon. The Linux version of Firefox is very usable, and the larger Windows user base means more dev effort goes into the browser as a whole. Linux is not hurt because a piece of software is cross-platform rather than Linux-exclusive.
Regarding the video acceleration issue the article author is whining about, you can enable hardware video acceleration on any GPU in Firefox if you want to by going into about:config and have been able to do that for a long time. The reason Firefox is taking so long to enable it by default is because Linux GPU drivers were and still are buggy in ways that Firefox was triggering. Contrary to the author's assertion, the hardware video acceleration thing wasn't and isn't a Firefox problem.
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Pale Moon has severe performance issues. It's probably a good job that it's non very popular either, otherwise people would start poking holes in its security pretty fast.
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Unless you switched away very recently, I strongly suggest giving it another try. Version 32.2.0, released May 16, 2023, is the release that fixed almost all the previously broken websites, and subsequent releases have improved web compatibility even further.
Re:Fork it? (Score:4, Informative)
Have you ever LOOKED at Firefox's codebase? It is an absolute mess. Just setting up a coherent dev environment where you can build AND debug is nothing short of a ridiculously frustrating
Re:Fork it? (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Have you ever LOOKED at Firefox's codebase? It is an absolute mess"
Frankly, that is probably true for all huge, established, community-driven code. Take a look at LibreOffice :) It is exactly why it is laughable when someone says "oh just fork it." Really? And where is the support for that fork going to come from? Try forking Chromium and see how far you get with keeping up with security threats and intentional changes by Google to control the web. That is one reason why Chrom* is so locked under Google's control.
Sure, there are many "browsers" based on Chrom*, but they are all essentially the SAME BROWSER just wearing different clothes. It is NOT browser diversity- we still have only the same two effective choices under non-MacOS, which is Firefox and Google. And the last thing we need is any more mindshare and power in the hands of Google.
Re:Fork it? (Score:4, Informative)
There's GNOME Web on Linux, which is WebKit-based and therefore very similar to Safari. Some web devs use it on Linux specifically to reproduce rendering bugs reported on Safari. So, you do have all three major rendering engines on Linux.
Re:Fork it? (Score:5, Interesting)
> >"Have you ever LOOKED at Firefox's codebase? It is an absolute mess"
> Frankly, that is probably true for all huge, established, community-driven code.
That's not true, and simply introducing a statement with "Franky, ..." does not make it frank.
How about the Linux kernel? Isn't it "huge and established and community-driven"? Yet it's not a mess in the way Firefox is.
> Take a look at LibreOffice :)
Just like Mozilla/Netscape, OpenOffice was a huge mess since the very beginning -- even before becoming LibreOffice and "community-driven" (for whatever the fuck this latter term is supposed to mean).
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>"How about the Linux kernel? Isn't it "huge and established and community-driven"?
Yeah, that is probably an exception.
>""community-driven" (for whatever the fuck this latter term is supposed to mean)."
I am sure you can figure out what I meant. Hint: controlled and contributed to by the community, not only some huge corporation, like Chrom* is.
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Well mozilla and openoffice both started out as developed by a corporation, and both were extremely messy when initially released.
Linux on the other hand started out as community driven.
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It is true for any code base. Firefox is no more messy than Chromiums code base, which is swamp land of mostly dead code floating around rotting.
Re:Fork it? (Score:5, Informative)
The FF source code is OSS, so if enough are frustrated with FF's management, then there's probably enough interest to maintain a fork.
This is the myth of Open Source. The reality is:
(1) The Firefox source code is a gigantic mess. Thousands of files scattered across hundreds of folders, with cryptic, obscure names and no documentation that explains where to find anything.
(2) The build process is beyond ridiculous. It requires several different programs and each one must be a specific version, often several versions out of date. Just getting everything to compile properly, without making any changes to the source code, is EXTREMELY tedious and difficult.
(3) If you aren't an expert in C++, you're fucked.
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Well, as to point 3, there are a considerable number of people who are expert in C++.
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Re:Fork it? (Score:4, Funny)
issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer.
Oh don't worry, Mozilla ignores fixing and addressing things on the Windows side just as much as the Linux side.
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I was going to say something similar. Especially on the Android side. Firefox for Android chews up the battery. It's got a bit better, but it's still terrible compared to Chrome.
Add-ons just seem to make it worse. You would think that uBlock would reduce the amount of crap the browser has to deal with, but apparently the overhead of blocking it in the first place is worse than just using a basic DNS blocklist (the only option in Chrome). DarkReader seems to actually make things worse, despite reducing OLED
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Re:Fork it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux Desktop suffers from a Chrome problem, and I'd avoid Chrome because it comes with some sneaky things that you won't see until it's too late.
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I use Chromium, does it count?
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"browser engine that is optimised fully for Linux" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"browser engine that is optimised fully for Lin (Score:5, Insightful)
And is now under strict Google control. And they certainly do control it and the web due to people using it, blindly. So what a nightmare.
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I miss Konqueror so much. It was my only browser from about 2008 to 2016.
The integration with the desktop, and having both file manager and web browser in the same program, were amazing.
It had adblocking built in, and you could have it ask you before setting a cookie.
Re: "browser engine that is optimised fully for Li (Score:2)
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The integration with the desktop, and having both file manager and web browser in the same program, were amazing.
I'll take your word for it. On Windows 98 SE with only 8MB of RAM, it was terrible.
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We had that. That was KDE's KHTML. Which was then forked into WebKit.
None of which would successfully display many pages which worked well in Mozilla browsers. It didn't actually work properly until Google got ahold of it, which is part of how we got here. I tried to switch to it several times and always gave up because basic functionality wasn't reliable.
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And now they pay for Webkit and Blink's development.
Amazing what money can do.
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WebKit wasn't bad even then. The problem is that at the time web sites had very bad code, mostly only supporting Internet Explorer and WebKit was standards-based. Firefox did a fair amount of work to try to handle buggy IE HTML.
Recently, even before Edge moved to Chromium, we had multiple standards-based rendering engines and they MOSTLY work the same. It was a nice time. But now everyone is re-implementing Chromium in a new wrapper and we're losing our standards-based design again. It's just "design f
Why even have editors? (Score:3)
Re:Why even have editors? (Score:5, Funny)
Look who's talking about posting garbage Mr. â(TM)âoeâ¦soâ
The Only Reason Linux Distros Default to Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Only Reason Linux Distros Default to Firefo (Score:5, Insightful)
>" In my opinion, distros should consider using Brave as their default browser."
That is a *HORRIBLE* idea. And no, "Brave" is not any faster or better than Firefox. By using it, you are clearly telling every website that you are using Chrom* and furthering the insane control that Google now wields over the web. Nothing could be less in the "Linux spirit."
There is ZERO effective browser diversity without Firefox. Supporting it is of utmost importance. What we need are more players, not fewer, and all the browsers based on Chrom* are a really just single player wearing different clothing.
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Brave cares about its Linux users far more than MoFo does.
The few great engineers there are surrounded by political activists.
Who are indirectly responsible for Brave existing.
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I don't doubt any of that. But the fact remains that they built their house on a Chrom* foundation and property, so they do not control their destiny. Using Brave is absolutely no different than using any other Chrom* browser from the standpoint of shifting control to Google and allowing the web to program to a single, Google-control "standard."
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Using Brave is absolutely no different than using any other Chrom* browser from the standpoint of shifting control to Google
You sound like a FF developer or a Mozilla employee. Shifting control to Google? How about MF who has held FF users hostage because of their distaste for Chromium-based browsers, making draconian decisions and constantly changing things without input from the community? I don't know ANYBODY who appreciated the latest FF UI redesigns.
Re:The Only Reason Linux Distros Default to Firefo (Score:5, Insightful)
>"You sound like a FF developer or a Mozilla employee."
Nothing could be further from the truth...
>"Shifting control to Google?"
That is the fact.
>"How about MF who has held FF users hostage because of their distaste for Chromium-based browsers, making draconian decisions and constantly changing things without input from the community? I don't know ANYBODY who appreciated the latest FF UI redesigns."
And you may include me among them. I am forever frustrated by Mozilla's UI design decisions. And I am highly critical of them taking away the ability for the user to decide things like tabs on bottom, or the way single-click highlights (but does not copy) the URL, or trying to force a stupid "extensions" button with no way to move it (without resorting to userCSS), etc, etc.
1) Chrome/Chromium is certainly even WORSE in the regard of UI design decisions. And they give the user even less control. And unlike those, Firefox does support userCSS so we can still reconfigure most of the UI.
2) Firefox is just as secure and probably as fast as any Chrom*. And it might be said it is even more so in some ways. It uses less memory, and it respects privacy even more.
3) If you think that using Chrom* doesn't shift control of the web to Google, then you are not paying attention or don't understand the situation.
4) I would love nothing better than to have MORE *actual* browser choices. Chrom* is just one choice (regardless of what clothing it is wearing), Firefox is the other. For non-MacOS platforms, there isn't much else. At the rate we are going, not only will we never have a third or fourth choice, but Firefox will disappear and then there will be ZERO choice.
So please don't label me as some Mozilla associate or apologist. I am not. However, I am a realist, and I do know that given a choice, Firefox is better for user security, user UI choice, privacy, and protection of open standards. All while performing well and being at least as stable. But it is far from ideal.
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Using CCS to style the browser UI is one of those features that you think is incredibly important, but which only 0.01% of the user base uses at an outsized cost to developers.
We were discussing what a mess the Firefox source code is earlier in the thread. A big chunk of that is down to the UI being build with a cross platform, flexible toolkit that supports a subset of CSS. The Chrome equivalent is much simpler. Obviously you are not happy about that because you have very specific tastes when it comes to t
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Chrome is Google's browser based on Chromium.
Chromium is the open source browser.
ChromiumOS, on the other hand...
But don't let me stop you now, OK?
Re: The Only Reason Linux Distros Default to Firef (Score:2)
https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]
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"Shows fewer ads"?? Perhaps I'm just ignoring them, or go to sites that don't feature them, but I rarely see ads in Firefox. When I do, I generally just go to a different site.
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>"Brave is a _lot_ faster than Firefox
Not that I have seen. And Brave shouldn't be any faster than any other Chrom* at rendering.
>shows fewer ads
uBlock Origin. I see zero ads.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
>starts faster
Firefox starts essentially instantly on any of my systems.
>"and has a nicer interface."
Matter of opinion, but there is also userChrome
https://github.com/Aris-t2/Cus... [github.com]
>"Also, you can change the user-ID so you can tell websites you're using something else."
You can do that i
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>" In my opinion, distros should consider using Brave as their default browser."
That is a *HORRIBLE* idea. And no, "Brave" is not any faster or better than Firefox. By using it, you are clearly telling every website that you are using Chrom* and furthering the insane control that Google now wields over the web.
Why would I want websites to know what browser I'm using? They should all be functionally the same as far as the website is concerned. The less they know about specific browsers, the better. They make their websites work in all browsers, exactly the same.
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>"Why would I want websites to know what browser I'm using? They should all be functionally the same as far as the website is concerned. The less they know about specific browsers, the better. They make their websites work in all browsers, exactly the same."
Excellent question and observation.
If web sites were designed to only open standards, you would be correct- in theory it shouldn't matter, and they shouldn't care. But they are NOT being designed that way. Why? There are differences in browsers that
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I hate to burst your bubble, but Google has been slowly working on reducing the user-agent string for years. So has Mozilla. Google goes slowly because they don't want to break the web for users, and because they don't actually wield the immense power you attribute to them.
The rest of it is just lazy developers. Chrome does well on standard compliance tests, and developers are free to target those standards if they wish. There are plenty of tools that will check your code for you. The main reason for having
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Why would I want websites to know what browser I'm using?
lol... honest question?
They should all be functionally the same as far as the website is concerned.
They're not.
The less they know about specific browsers, the better.
If the above condition were true, I'd agree with you, but since it isn't, the less they know, the more broken the experience is.
They make their websites work in all browsers, exactly the same.
That's functionally impossible, because the corporations that gatekeep the development are gigantic piles of shit.
Google has resorted to deviating from standards in Blink (formerly WebCore) wherever it suits them, with zero regard for how loud the backlash is.
So, when you've got a standardized meaning for a field hint, but means 2 different thin
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Why would I want websites to know what browser I'm using? They should all be functionally the same as far as the website is concerned.
Already answered above, but missed to mention one thing. Fancy web sites that use a lot of Javascript and CSS need to know your browser so that they can work around its quirks and incompatibilities. They know that via the user agent. The user agent can easily be spoofed. As a matter of fact, there are plugins for all browsers that allow you to change it on the fly, even enter your own text, but changing it risks some web sites not working for you.
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also, kinda strange how almost all chrome-clones claim to have "better privacy and security"
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Isn't part of it that Mozilla offered a favorable distribution license? You can't distribute Chrome with Chrome branding in OSS. You have to use Chromium. A lot of distros are able to bundle actual Firefox.
Linux lacks applications? No kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
"...both are dependent on the goodwill of two of the most ruthless corporations in the world..."
which has resulted in what cost?
"...does not consider Linux a first-tier platform..."
Linux is NOT a first-tier platform.
"Firefox is first and foremost a Windows browser, followed by macOS second, and Linux third."
Directly correlating with marketshare.
"I don't see anyone talking about this problem..."
Because Linux isn't a first-tier platform.
"Does Desktop Linux have a Firefox problem?"
No, it has a competitiveness problem.
If the author didn't lack perspective with each and every point he concocted to drive his narrative, perhaps he's understand.
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perhaps he's understand
Perhaps he’s understand perhaps he’s not understand. Very disappoint.
Re:Linux lacks applications? No kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Does Desktop Linux have a Firefox problem?"
This is going to be super unpopular here, but IMHO Desktop Linux has a Desktop Linux problem.
Linux isn't a desktop OS in the sense of a daily-driver, mainstream, primary OS. It's a server/embedded OS with many desktop features such as a GUI layered on top. It's an incredible, well-built, and in many ways superior OS, but its main design goals aren't those that a desktop OS has as main goals.
A desktop OS needs to be primarily trivial learn and use, and secondarily to be rich in usefulness (wide application availability). Security, reliability, elegance... those tertiary at best. But those are Linux's strengths.
There's a reason why we're a couple decades into "is this the year of Linux on the desktop?" Because while Linux may be the most awesome Swiss Army Knife that can do so many things and do them well... the tool that's being sought is a simple spoon.
I'm not directly advocating "well, if you want a (good) browser you need to run Windows/Mac" but pointing out that for decades now the reality is "well, if you want a (good) most things you need to run Windows/Mac". That's where the vast and robust application choice can be found. That's a reality.
What's the solution? I don't know there is one. To make Linux have desktop market share the other two have I suspect it's identity would have to be lost. At the very least it'd have to become like Mac where the Unix side of things is completely irrelevant to virtually every user, and the GUI seems to be the OS. Which is super anti-Linux.
Re:Linux lacks applications? No kidding. (Score:4, Informative)
A desktop OS needs to be primarily trivial learn and use, and secondarily to be rich in usefulness (wide application availability). Security, reliability, elegance... those tertiary at best. But those are Linux's strengths.
Windows is just as complicated under the hood as Linux is. When it goes wrong it's just as hard to fix. What's worse, Microsoft frequently suggests "fixes" that not only fix nothing, but which also take hours to fix nothing. How many times have you had a 0x8....... error causing Windows update to fail, and you've tried all the recommended fixes without anything getting fixed? And then maybe it fixes itself a week later? The end user at this point either sells their computer to someone else like me who puts Linux on it (have done several times) or if they know how, they use recovery to wipe the system and start over, or they pay someone else money to back up their files and do that.
This whole idea that Windows is more maintainable, more reliable, or any of that other crap is just total nonsense. The one and only thing it has over Linux is a larger software library. That is very important, and half of the real reason Windows continues to dominate. The other half is also non-technical, it has to do with governmental operational inertia. Governments everywhere use mostly Windows, and shit flows downhill. If you want to do business with governments, you have to use Windows just to make sure formatting will work correctly (because Microsoft's specification for their format says in numerous places "Do what office does here" because Microsoft doesn't actually understand what Office is doing under the hood either.)
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Totally agree.
One of the big things Linux brings to the table is choice, but when you're trying to standardize a platform for desktop use, choice is one of the last things you want to have because it fragments the project between itself.
Everyone likes to talk about Linux as a single platform. In reality, the only true part that is a single platform is the kernel itself, then you have distributions like Redhat, Debian, Slackware and Arch, then you got hundreds of forks of those with varying levels of softwar
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> I do not see any relevant difference between Linux, macOS or Windows as a "desktop OS".
There is a difference.
Windows is ubiquitous, has been for years, everything works on it.
macOS is tied to a popular, trendy hardware vendor that refuses to ship Windows.
Linux is... well.. nothing.
This isn't a tech problem to solve with a tech solution.
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"...both are dependent on the goodwill of two of the most ruthless corporations in the world..." which has resulted in what cost?
Good point because, frankly, the characterization of Google and Apple as "two of the most ruthless corporations in the world" is utterly ridiculous. Neither company is a paragon of virtue (what large human institution is?), but both are actually very good citizens as corporations go. In particular with respect to open source software, both companies are large net contributors. Google in particular supports hundreds of open source projects, is the largest funder of the Linux Foundation, and more. Very little
I'm not seeing the "Firefox Problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems described seem more like general issues bedeviling desktop Linux.
Aeh, what? (Score:2)
I use Vivaldi on Linux (chromium). There is a selection of other browsers that all work pretty well and use different engines. There is no problem. Just install whatever you like, defaults are not fate on Linux, unlike Windows (where they are still not fate, but deviating from MS imposed defaults often causes ongoing problems). There also is no performance problem. Browsers are fast enough. WASM may become a question at some time, but getting it to run fast is not really hard as it was specifically designed
Eh ... but I get it. (Score:4, Informative)
This lack of video acceleration was — and for AMD and Nvidia users, still is — a major contributing factor to Linux battery life on laptops taking a serious hit compared to their Windows counterparts... It's not just hardware accelerated video decoding. Gesture support has taken much longer to arrive on the Linux version than it did on the Windows version — things like using swipes to go back and forward, or pinch to zoom on images...
Personally, I only have desktop systems, one Windows 10 and one Linux Mint 21.2, (I have other HW, but I'm not using them at this time) and I don't game, so those laptop-oriented issues and lack of acceleration don't really bother me, though I can understand the concerns. I mainly want to be able to configure the browser, usually disabling "features", utilize the few extensions I use, like uMatrix, etc... and hopefully have a bit more privacy. I prefer Firefox for those things, especially as it seems to provide/allow more of those than Chrome/Edge.
The only big issue I've had recently wasn't with Firefox directly, but with Ubuntu forcing Firefox (and other apps, like Emacs) to be Snap only. Not a fan of snaps/flatpak, etc... This caused me to switch away from Ubuntu. I considered Debian, but didn't want to use the ESR version of Firefox or dick around with mixing Stable and Testing/Unstable, or manual installs (on Debian or Ubuntu), etc... I ended up switching to Mint 21, which has Snap disabled by default and has pledged to keep it that way, and am pretty happy about that.
Re:Eh ... but I get it. (Score:4)
>" lack of acceleration don't really bother me"
Bingo. There is no real problem, except in the mind of the author. The author has some pet-peeve about one tiny issue that he/she has. I use Linux on all kinds of devices, and not having "accelerated video" defaulted to "on" until recently has amounted to about zero concern.
>"The only big issue I've had recently wasn't with Firefox directly, but with Ubuntu forcing Firefox (and other apps, like Emacs) to be Snap only. Not a fan of snaps/flatpak, etc... This caused me to switch away from Ubuntu."
And that is EXACTLY why I am using Mint. If Mint turns evil (which is very unlikely, considering they are already gearing up to rebase on Debian, directly) then I will just move on.
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Plus I'm not even convinced how true it it.
A while back (months) I found that firefox started running like shit when pytorch was running. I guessed it was video acceleration and switched it off. Must have defaulted to on at some point.
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You also have the option of using the Mozilla-packaged binaries on any distro. This way it keeps updating through Mozilla for the latest security patches. Another downside is the system is xdg-open is still going to call Firefox ESR on any click inside a compliant software (and not the version you extracted to /opt or /home), unless you are willing to reconfigure it. Conceptually it's also annoying because it's not packaged by the distro, but OTOH Mozilla binaries are very well tested.
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Speaking from experience, you have options my dude. Mozilla runs a PPA so you can install and run regular apt-based Firefox on Ubuntu. I removed snap from Ubuntu and did this and expected to run into issues, but never did before I switched away (to Endeavor).
On Debian stable, you can install regular Firefox from Mozilla outside of the repos and let it auto-update itself like it does on Windows. I do this because I very rarely open Firefox on my home theater system so I'd rather update it when I actually go
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Thanks for the info.
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FYI the FIrefox PPA is actually run by Canonical and not Mozilla. Lots of people gets confused due to the PPA being run by "The Mozilla Team" which is not Mozilla but the group employed by Canonical to maintain Mozilla products.
And it requires you to install it in a snap.
LOL nice joke there, Canonical. No. I'm never installing Ubuntu ever again.
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We're specifically talking about avoiding the snap. I installed from the PPA after removing snap from my machine. Thanks for the info F.Ultra if you read this, I didn't know that was the case. Bottom line is it's still available in a good format. The Firefox snap and probably all snaps in general suck shit.
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On Debian stable, you can install regular Firefox from Mozilla outside of the repos and let it auto-update itself like it does on Windows. I do this because I very rarely open Firefox on my home theater system so I'd rather update it when I actually go to use it instead of replacing it's files constantly. No issues at all with it.
You can, but I hate auto updates and I also hate installing software where my user profile has access to write to the binaries. So I installed firefox in /opt. Now when I get a new version I ( cd /opt; tar xvfj ~/Downloads/firefox...; zfs snapshot rpool/opt/firefox@version ) ... I can go back to any retained version any time (either just by cd'ing to a .snapshot directory and running it, or by destroying the newer snapshot(s)) and I prune old snapshots occasionally.
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This lack of video acceleration was — and for AMD and Nvidia users, still is — a major contributing factor to Linux battery life on laptops taking a serious hit compared to their Windows counterparts... It's not just hardware accelerated video decoding. Gesture support has taken much longer to arrive on the Linux version than it did on the Windows version — things like using swipes to go back and forward, or pinch to zoom on images...
Personally, I only have desktop systems, one Windows 10 and one Linux Mint 21.2, (I have other HW, but I'm not using them at this time) and I don't game, so those laptop-oriented issues and lack of acceleration don't really bother me, though I can understand the concerns. I mainly want to be able to configure the browser, usually disabling "features", utilize the few extensions I use, like uMatrix, etc... and hopefully have a bit more privacy. I prefer Firefox for those things, especially as it seems to provide/allow more of those than Chrome/Edge.
The only big issue I've had recently wasn't with Firefox directly, but with Ubuntu forcing Firefox (and other apps, like Emacs) to be Snap only. Not a fan of snaps/flatpak, etc... This caused me to switch away from Ubuntu. I considered Debian, but didn't want to use the ESR version of Firefox or dick around with mixing Stable and Testing/Unstable, or manual installs (on Debian or Ubuntu), etc... I ended up switching to Mint 21, which has Snap disabled by default and has pledged to keep it that way, and am pretty happy about that.
I mostly run in VM's. Browsers hardware acceleration never seems to work properly, one of the first things I disable, otherwise I get graphical glitches and lag.
Mildly humorous tangent (Score:2)
I find it amusing that Gnome Web is based on Webkit - which began its life as a fork of KDE's Konqueror.
Mozilla has failed its users (Score:5, Interesting)
I want Firefox to be a real browser again. We have un-Googled chromium, now we need un-Googled Firefox. I don't want to use patchy hacks like Librewolf or Waterfox anymore, I want the real fox to stand up for itself. If we have to take over control of Firefox from Mozilla to a more competent organisation, i would support it.
No (Score:3)
Everybody has a standards problem.
As long as the relavent standards (especially JavaScript and its ilk) change more often than is practical for anybody but the largest 2-3 browser developers to cope and keep up with, and as long as the browser big-boys (we know who they are) continue their "my way or the highway" meddling by adding non-standards-based features that then most websites end up catering to due to market share (or by implenting standards in workarounds-needed ways), these issues will continue to plauge the web.
I feel like maybe there was a time as IE's dominance waned where things looked like they might be getting slightly better, but it's since gotten worse. I can stack up a half-dozen of the "most popular" browsers side by side and load a complicated website, and get presentations that are none exactly alike. This is not good.
Of course, I'm generally cranky these days by the smart-device environment that encourages the dissolution of the distinction between protocol and presentation, combining both within an (shutter) "app" that exchanges data in a proprietary way. But that's another rant for another day.
I suppose the best that one could do right now is to determine, for themselves and their use case, which is the least of all evils, and if they're technically able and inclined, pick a browser project to support technically, or if not but still willing, contribute funding to same.
Or, if you happen to have enough clout, kick Google in the balls for being evil, and kick Mozilla in the ass for being stupid, and get the both of 'em to change...
Lots of options (Score:2)
OSNews is part of the problem (Score:3)
Absolute shit Wordpress site with messy HTML structure, embedded styles and a bunch of trackers.
Firefox is already able to do everything the web needs. Even if it never added another feature it's basically complete. I don't want or need it to support new DRM and tracker technology pushed by Google.
If there's a problem here it's websites that care more about their advertisers and their SEO than their readers. Should we be surprised that an "enshitified web" also requires an "enshitified browser" for "best experience"?
I run Firefox and uBlock on every website. If the site stops working because of that I stop using the site.
Personally I think a change is coming. Someone will eventually popularise a web protocol that handles information exchange only and leaves the rendering and behavior up to the end user. Corporations won't want it but users won't care. Pretty much 90% of what I do online doesn't require every website to be its own app and the rest have native apps anyway. I'd be happy to pay any service that just gives me the information I asked for and then gets the fuck out of the way.
Desktop Linux hasn't got a problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even bigger problem on Ubuntu ... (Score:3)
is that Ubuntu forces users to install Firefox via snap, which is still totally broken. Eg it will simply fail on any system where the /home/USER directory is a symbolic link to somewhere else. This is the case for the current LTS and I think even still for the current release.
I agree with the other points, though I suspect it is not entirely Firefox's fault: e.g. the whole situation with hardware video acceleration on Linux has been a nuisance since forever.
Sadly this will only get worse, e.g. with regard to Google's passkeys, both at the Firefox browser level but also at the Linux OS level. Again, not Firefox's fault but caused by the general lack of support for new hardware and their drivers on Linux that one can see even with companies like Google.
Well done, Slashdot editors (Score:2)
The "Gnome Web" link has no href, clicking it does nothing.
Best developed example as "problem" (Score:2)
This kind of ass-backward thinking is what holds us back.
Here you have an often-used example of extensively developed software.
But because it doesn't meet some form of artificial bemchmark for WHATEVER, it's "a problem"?
This is what we, out in REALITY, like to refer to as "whining".
yes, fork! (Score:2)
yes! let's fork firefox! instead of investing in any of the already firefox forks, or even any other web browser.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
> Firefox has been enshitified for a long time already.
But Chrome and MS-EdgeShit are even more enshitified. In the land of grade F's, D+ is king.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure how to put this gently, folks. But the entire world is deeply enshittified. And the rate of enshittification is clearly accelerating on all fronts. Good luck to us all!
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AI will bring enshitification to the masses: a HAL in every garage!
Open garage bay door, HAL (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sorry, Dave, I cannot do that for you, and I think you know why. When you and your partner were in the car in the garage with the windows rolled up, I read your lips. You were going to disconnect your door opener from The Cloud, and I cannot let you imperil the Internet of Things.
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(A senior community near you, circa 2030)
"Ma'am, this is the third time we've had to come out this week for an 'accidental' cut of the HALnet line to your home. Please inform your husband that we're going to start charging for every time he 'slips' with his axe..."
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Don't forget to deduct the social credit points, Citizen Technician.
Too big to manage (Score:3)
P.S. I think browsing should be split into 3 specialty standards because one-size-fits-all is proving too big to manage, favoring oligopoly control.
The 3 categories would be:
A) Mostly static documents -- what HTML was originally meant for and my still be good enough.
B) Media, art, video, & gaming -- Somewhat Flash like in its target, but more secure.
C) CRUD & Data -- Business and administrative oriented rich GUI's and data sheets.
These may be separate "browsers", merged into one, or browser pluggins
Re:Too big to manage (Score:4, Insightful)
and who would drive this "solution", and for what reason? Who would benefit? And how is the current approach "too big to manage"?
Capitalism favors "oligopoly control", "browsing" doesn't apart from natural capitalistic forces. Brain-dead redrawing of boxes in a design diagram doesn't change capitalism, and "oligopoly control" would need to approve of your "solution" in the first place.
Re: Too late (Score:2)
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
FF NOT enshitified. Sick of /.ers always coming down on FF. There are a few little places where they run ads and "shit" -- but all of these are easier than shit to turn off. They try to experiment with ways of making money, but unlike RedHat (much less Chrome, Safari, etc) they try to stay inside the spirit of the open web and Free Software.
I have dabbled into the FF dev community, and it is not some cesspool of crap -- far from it. It is very smart, friendly folks who try hard to help you join and learn. It's such a large project that you need to adjust, but most of the dev adjustments you might need to make all make sense -- FF has build cool tools over the years.
Google, Apple, MS have all worked hard to spin their bullshit and /. people have either fallen for it or else must just be bald shills. For years /.ers have made a cottage industry of complaining about FF. I'm sick to death of it.
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FF NOT enshitified. Sick of /.ers always coming down on FF. There are a few little places where they run ads and "shit"
People are complaining about how Firefox keeps removing the ability for users to control their own environment. The fact that control is removed to show ads/make money is irrelevant as we would just turn off whatever is annoying us.
It is the lack of end user control that causes people to dislike Firefox. D+ indeed.
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Do not understand you - your link was to a 4 year old article about how FF messed up their add-on signing?
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Free Software is your browser argument? Please. Charging money is racist now.
What are you talking about? Charging money has never been "racist" in Free Software community. Even RMS condones it.
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It is not worth responding to... anyone posting such nonsense has fallen pray to a dark side of stupidity.
Plus, the complaint about "breaking" compatibility with old extensions has been explained a zillions times, and is true- Mozilla simply could NOT improve their engine without making that move, and it worked (it became much faster). And pretty much all extensions that mattered were ported and available again.
The only real valid complaint is that Mozilla promised they would eventually start opening the U
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Or perhaps it's just good foresight
Or rather, good eyesight.
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