From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Amirouche Boubekki Subject: Re: Firefox 52's end of life, packaging Chromium Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2018 23:25:34 +0200 Message-ID: References: <87ftyx35pw.fsf@lassieur.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:39908) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fv85G-0007mZ-Rj for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 29 Aug 2018 17:33:03 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fv7yG-0007kd-6M for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 29 Aug 2018 17:25:49 -0400 Received: from mail-oi0-x236.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4003:c06::236]:38668) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fv7yG-0007k6-00 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 29 Aug 2018 17:25:48 -0400 Received: by mail-oi0-x236.google.com with SMTP id x197-v6so11814887oix.5 for ; Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:25:47 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <87ftyx35pw.fsf@lassieur.org> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: =?UTF-8?Q?Cl=C3=A9ment_Lassieur?= Cc: guix-devel Hello all :] I will confess that if I use Ubuntu today, long story short, it's because of the web browser. I could not find my way around patchelf so I gave up and installed Ubuntu. The matter relates to me a lot! Le mer. 29 ao=C3=BBt 2018 =C3=A0 11:03, Cl=C3=A9ment Lassieur a =C3=A9crit : > > Hi, > > Firefox 52 isn't supported anymore upstream[1] and we don't have a > package for Firefox 60. > Currently the only alternative is Epiphany but > it's close to unusable (it crashes every 5 minutes, and sometimes > freezes my computer). Here the list of known issues: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?package=3Dguix;include=3Dsubject:= epiphany > > > So the question is: can we push the Chromium package? I've read it's > almost ready[2]. > It's probably far better than everything we have, > despite not being totally 'finished'. Maybe we can add what's left to > do as a TODO and fix the package later? > > What do you think? > > Cl=C3=A9ment > > [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/01/11/announcing-esr60-= policy-engine/ > [2]: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=3D28004#233 Not having access to a recent web browser can be a pain. That said they are alternatives. Many that don't involve more guix energy to be sucked into supporting chromium or firefox which I predict to be really painful in the future. Web browsers are not just about getting the initial package inside the main repository. It's a lot of pain. What I think is that we choose our battle wisely. If this discussion did not pop on the mailling list I would be doing something else. Nevermind. Let's choose our battle wisely. I want to remind that the core of the guix = users are GNU followers and are also anything but pro web or pro web browser or a variation of that. I don't say every GNU follower is against the www. It's not the core of potential guix users I won't help to bring firefox or chromium because I think even if done ethically will be a worthless time sink. Let's be rational, and try to answer the following questions: 1) What firefox or chromium are useful for compared to other graphical web browsers? 2) What will chromium bring to guix and guix developers that they can't do otherwise? 3) What are the minimal features for a graphical web browser to be useful for a guix developer? I was going to say, let's find or build a minimal browser that use qtwebkit but even that is worthless because several people reported performance build issues about it on IRC. Sorry, it seems like a worthless timesink to me. The only thing worthwhile is to build a web browser using Guile but that will take several years before one can use it instead of Chromium... I still don't know why people would want to use that except for SaaSS stuff. They are workarounds. --- > The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a > natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that > was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like > that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was > done by amateurs. Alan Kay.