Re: Debian release criteria.
On Wed 04 Jan 2023 at 14:26:47 (-0800), peter@easthope.ca wrote:
> Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> dpkg -l | grep fire
> ii firefox-esr 102.6.0esr-1~deb11u1
> i386 Mozilla Firefox web browser - Extended Support Release (ESR)
>
> > All software is buggy: it is a matter of luck whether bugs hit you.
>
> =8~/ A hacker might be satisfied with luck. An engineer should not
> be. If I claim to be a package maintainer, I test as broadly as
> feasible.
But you wrote "Firefox has become slow and crashes frequently."
Well, yes, FF 102.x is quite likely to be bigger, and hence slower
than 91.x, and 78.x, and so on.
> A 32 bit machine is easily found.
What, you expect someone to obtain an i386 machine just to replicate
that it's slow? And make it crash in some unspecified manner?
I ran FF on a 500MB i386 laptop to the end of buster, and it was
exceedingly slow, but didn't actually crash. You just had to stick to
no more than a couple of tabs, and avoid the temptation of waving
the cursor around (which would mean waiting for all those movements to
be processed so that you regained control of its position).
You don't appear to have posted what the spec of /your/ i386 machine
is: in particular, how much memory and how much swap?
> > the pace of Firefox change is such that releases age very quickly
>
> Bulk of the software and frequent updates are evident but what changes
> in functionality? The Web site of my credit union works as it did
> five years ago.
What's that got to do with Firefox? OK, it's good that the CU hasn't
run with every fad that some web developers seem to want, so that
they get what I call a high "coo-rating". (Coo, look at that.)
> Wikipedia pages are still text with pictures and
> occasional video.
Sure, they tend to be no more complex than required for what's
being displayed. I assume that's their policy, very sensible.
> Flakey Web sites still have annoying animations and
> distracting slide shows. What's improved?
Countless other websites that aren't flaky. But many websites that
I remember having real difficulties displaying (like many newspapers),
are rendered much more smoothly by today's Firefox. And the quality of
printing from web pages has improved quite a lot recently; even
those like the interactive ones that the NY Times often uses.
> Not long ago the release criterion was "release when ready".
> What's become of that?
Where's your evidence that Firefox 102.6 is not ready? You haven't
posted anything specific, and your criticism seems more like a whine,
with a provocative subject line that appears to suggest that Debian's
quality standards have slipped.
I now run my i386 laptop just for its portability. I have eight
xterms open in fvwm, and use it to set things going on the four
or five other machines scattered through the house (all 64-bit).
I'm not sure why you run Firefox on 32-bits: any particular reason,
or just for old times sake?
Cheers,
David.
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