Re: Packaging a free Firefox

[Mathieu Othacehe <m.othacehe@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I agree with Pjotr and Clément, I do use mainly two programs on GuixSD,
Firefox and Emacs. Packaging a custom Firefox was like the first thing I
did when starting Guix. Even if we put a lot of efforts in Icecat, it it
still lagging behind Firefox. Thus, having an upstream stripped Firefox
seems like a good idea to me.

Mathieu

Pjotr Prins writes:

> On Wed, May 02, 2018 at 11:06:32PM -0700, Chris Marusich wrote:
>> Clément Lassieur <clement@lassieur.org> 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?
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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
>
> In my experience Icecat usually works. But sometimes it does not and
> it is usually a JavaScript thing. It would be nice to have firefox
> too. I agree with Clément that it is an important option for users and
> it is still a dominant browser. Currently we only can install it as
> binary blobs. Which are often broken in my setup.
>
> Pj.