Re: Iceweasel security updates?
On Tuesday 12 April 2016 17:08:10 The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2016-04-12 at 11:43, Harris Paltrowitz wrote:
> > On 04/12/2016 11:06 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 12 April 2016 15:14:08 Harris Paltrowitz wrote:
> >>> I tried Firefox 45 last week but as you may remember from my
> >>> recent emails, I experienced major issues with choppy videos in
> >>> Youtube using Firefox 45, but not with Iceweasel 38.7.1. I've
> >>> since done a Debian re-install and I want to start fresh using
> >>> optimal applications, so I'd like to stick with 38.7.1 (as it
> >>> appears to be more compatible with Jessie) but I'm curious about
> >>> the security updates to it.
> >>
> >> Would firefox-esr (same site) solve that? I wouldn't bank on many
> >> updates for iceweasel now it is somewhat deprecated.
> >
> > I realize now that the selection list on that Mozilla/Debian website
> > has several release options that I don't understand -- besides esr/45
> > (which is the version I had problems with) there's release, beta and
> > aurora. Do you know what the differences are here?
>
> The Firefox development process follows a type of cascading release:
> http://www.askvg.com/mozilla-updates-firefox-update-channels-nightly-aurora
>-beta-and-release/
>
> There are nightly builds, which are compiled every night from the public
> source tree (assuming it actually builds at the moment), and made
> available for developer use. These are bleeding-edge, potentially
> unstable and buggy code.
>
> There's the 'Aurora' release channel, which is the next stage of
> stability after nightly builds. It's more or less the "experimental
> release" niche, the first step towards designating something as a
> release; think of it as comparable to an alpha release. After the old
> 'Aurora' becomes the new 'Beta', a version of the latest nightly code
> becomes the new Aurora. Not every new patch gets into Aurora - only
> patches which the developers agree are important for the coming release.
>
> There's the 'Beta' release channel, which is the next stage of stability
> after Aurora. After the old 'Beta' becomes the new 'Release' version,
> the old Aurora becomes the new Beta. As with Aurora, not every new patch
> gets into Beta - and the standards for what qualifies to get in are
> tighter than with Aurora.
>
> There's the 'Release' release channel, which is what gets published as a
> new official Firefox version. Once every six weeks (or thereabouts), the
> old Beta becomes the new Release. No patches at all are accepted into
> Release, unless a critically urgent oh-shit-that's-bad issue is
> discovered and the developers decide to make a "chemspill" point release
> (e.g., the difference between 45.0 and 45.0.1).
>
> There's the 'ESR' release channel, which is maintained over roughly a
> year-long period. Once every seven Firefox major versions (which come
> once every six weeks), a copy of the new Release version becomes the new
> ESR. In theory, only security and stability patches make it into the
> ESR; new features, and anything which might introduce a regression, are
> verboten. (In practice, the developers sometimes don't live up to that
> ideal.)
>
>
> The more you need stability, the lower down this list you should go
> with. The newer and faster you need new features and potential bug fixes
> (at the risk of new bugs being _added_), the higher up the list you
> should go with.
>
> For myself, I always recommend that anyone not actively developing
> Firefox should run the ESR.
But in this case it was the ESR with which he was having problems, so it might
be worth trying something else - and release is what Debian offers by
default.
Lisi
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