[Novalug] Firefox versioning

Richard Ertel richard.ertel@gmail.com
Wed Dec 16 14:57:17 EST 2009


"stable" as in "not labeled as beta by mozilla"

I'm not suggesting that Ubuntu 9.04 should have shipped with Firefox
3.5.  Firefox 3.5 didn't come out until June 30 (according to
mozilla's documented timeline history).  I am suggesting that when
Firefox 3.5 came out, upgrading to it in Ubuntu should have been easy
and simple to Firefox users.  Whether that be by a popup that says
"new version of firefox available! click here for details" that then
allows up upgrade after authentication, or by just upgrading to it
along with all the other applications that get upgraded on a daily
basis.  Firefox 3.5 was a pretty major release with new features that
people wanted. *I* think that Ubuntu should have gotten people
upgraded to it, that's all.

Excuses as to why they didn't do that don't interest me.

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 14:42, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org> wrote:
> "Stable" is subjective.
>
> Canonical-Ubuntu does a good job of integration testing before
> shipment.  To switch to Firefox 3.5.x just because it's out, during
> that integration testing just prior to a distro's release, would be
> a poor move.
>
> Heck I found Firefox 3.0-betas to be better than release 2.0.x for
> many, many things.
>
>
> As far as Windows, the "fat notification" _can_ be done because
> most users run with the privileges required to update the software,
> even in corporations (Yikes!).  On Linux, this is not the case.
>
> In fact, Fedora has not only been shipping PackageKit for a similar
> "fat notification" experience, along as you pass the Administrator
> credentials when prompted.  But Fedora 12 shipped with -- gasp --
> the concept that packages signed with a trusted key can be
> upgraded by lesser privileged users, as long as they were on the
> X console.  Guess what?  People balked, _hard_ at that.
>
> PackageKit does very similar, and is designed for more than just
> RPM-based distros.  PackageKit also has its annoyances as well.
> Most of us gurus turn it off.  Heck, there are a lot of us that prefer
> APT over YUM as well, but YUM is a good solution for most people
> who don't know what they are doing -- kinda like PackageKit.  ;)
>
> "Two (2) Per-user Methods to Disable PackageKit Notifications in GNOME ..."
>  http://bjs-redhat.livejournal.com/3361.html
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Richard Ertel <richard.ertel@gmail.com>
>
> gripe: the fact that Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't provide by default the latest
> stable version of firefox. granted, i installed the 3.5 package just
> fine, by searching for a solution and then implementing it. but just
> because i *can* do something doesn't mean that i *want* to have to.
>
> the fat notification you speak of would have to say that 3.0 would NOT
> be upgraded to 3.5. maybe that notification wouldn't be such a bad
> idea. in windows, firefox upgrades itself to the latest version. why
> should ubuntu not easily get the latest version also?
>



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