On Wed, May 02, 2018 at 23:06:32 -0700, Chris Marusich wrote: > Clément Lassieur writes: > >> I find Icecat very buggy, even if I compare it to a home-made Firefox >> package that inherits Icecat (and thus is very close to Icecat). For >> example I can't even pay with my credit card with icecat-52-guix, >> whereas I can with firefox-home-52-guix. (It looks like a javascript >> issue.) Also, lots of videos don't work, and it's difficult to know >> whether it's because of technical issues or because of DRM. > > This has not been my experience with IceCat. With two exceptions, > IceCat has performed just as well as Firefox for me for everything I > have done, including credit card payments. I sometimes watch YouTube > videos using IceCat, but I don't view many other videos, so I can't > really comment on how well IceCat handles videos. If it requires DRM, > of course, it's not going to work in IceCat, which is a good thing. > > When I use IceCat over TOR, it doesn't always work. When I use IceCat > with extensions (plugins? add-ons? I'm not sure what the right > terminology is here) like NoScript enabled, it doesn't always work. But > when I don't use TOR and I disable those add-ons, everything works just > as well as stock Firefox. If you're still having trouble after > disabling those things, can you describe the specifics of what you're > having trouble with? I use IceCat personally and FF Dev Edition at work. Until the recent move to WebExtensions, I used the same addons. I use NoScript and Tor and have no problems. But I rarely enable JS and never run proprietary JS, so my exposure may be different. I do not use LibreJS (because I don't usually run JS at all in general and it historically did not play well with NoScript; maybe that has changed). > The exceptions I have experienced with IceCat: > > 1) A website failed for me because IceCat enables Referer spoofing by > default (network.http.referer.spoofSource in about:config). I had to > disable that feature to use that website. This was a frustrating problem for me for CloudFlare CAPTCHAs---it would enter an infinte direct loop. Disabling referer spoofing fixed the issue. > 2) It used to be that IceCat would crash frequently for me. However, > once I changed my gfx.canvas.azure.backends and > gfx.content.azure.backends from "cairo" to "skia", this problem stopped > for me. I don't know if this is still an issue , since I haven't ever > switched it back to "cairo". See here for details: > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2016-11/msg00008.html It will crash for me if I try e.g. Jitsi Meet; I'll have to see if anything you are describing helps. Anyway: I too would like a modern version of FF packaged for Guix. I know that David Thompson was exploring it at some point but got hung up on some Rust packaging issues that he didn't have the time to explore. I want the modern performance benefits, and I also use the browser for web development. IceCat maintenance also effectively falls on Mark Weaver backporting security patches in Guix; Rubén Rodriguez (IceCat) maintainer has a lot on his plate and IceCat does not get a lot of attention. (If anyone wants to help with IceCat maintenance, he would like the help; contact us at maintainers@gnu.org.) -- Mike Gerwitz Free Software Hacker+Activist | GNU Maintainer & Volunteer GPG: D6E9 B930 028A 6C38 F43B 2388 FEF6 3574 5E6F 6D05 https://mikegerwitz.com