Chris Coulson's blog - Latest Comments

Re: About

minipanda — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 05:05:35 -0000

Re: Debugging the debugger

Perfect Hidden Justice — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 05:05:16 -0000

Re: Debugging the debugger

Chris Coulson — Fri, 04 May 2018 07:07:20 -0000

Yes, that does make more sense.

Re: Debugging the debugger

glandium — Fri, 04 May 2018 00:15:16 -0000

Arguably, the package that should have a dependency on libc6-dbg is gdb.

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Tamás Nagy — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 04:29:34 -0000

I have a framebuffer device. Can I compile Oxide for a framebuffer embedded arm device? When I compile, it gives --cflags x11, no package x11 found. Because I don't need X11, I use framebuffer. How to compile it so?

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

skierpage — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 18:42:55 -0000

I'm curious, what uses liboxideqtcore0 on my Ubuntu 15.04 desktop? It seems like it's used by unity-webapps, but as I understand it those just make web pages running in Firefox first-class applications in Unity. What's actually firing up a separate "Web browser engine"? Thanks!

It seems less than ideal that I have a 90MB liboxideqtcore0, and a 40MB libqt5webkit5 installed on my desktop (plus the 210 MB chromium-browser which I voluntarily installed) when they're all implementing WebKit. At least they're sharing glib and stdc++ :-) AFAICT unity-webapps-qml pulls in *both* liboxideqtcore0 and libqt5webkit5, which seems strange.

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Alberto Mardegan — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 08:23:15 -0000

I hope that some efforts will be taken to make Oxide's QML APIs and WebEngine's as similar as possible, at least when it comes to common features.
So that developers interested in only the basic sets of feature could just change the import line.

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Chris Coulson — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 14:15:44 -0000

Thanks :)

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Chris Coulson — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 14:15:30 -0000

We'd basically have the same issues we currently have with supporting QtWebkit (and WebkitGTK). It's explained in the first half of the blog post :)

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

greg S — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 23:12:22 -0000

I love how willing Ubuntu is to build their own solutions.

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Roland Taylor (RolandiXor) — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:47:23 -0000

What would be the support issue with Qt WebEngine?

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Israel — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 16:21:14 -0000

couldn't the browser app simply be a click package, that brings with it all its own dependancies (theoretically making it possible to run a different version of *packagename* for that app). I suppose the down side would be storage space, which can be quite limited on mobile devices...

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Chris Coulson — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 02:41:56 -0000

I'm aware of Qt WebEngine, although this was announced after I'd already started work on this. However, whilst it's great that somebody else is doing something similar, this would not solve our original problem - which is that we want something we can properly support for 5 years.

Also, Oxide isn't particularly tied to Qt. It's been designed to support new ports fairly easily (eg, I might add a Gtk port in the future)

Re: Private: Introducing Oxide

Roland Taylor (RolandiXor) — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 02:05:37 -0000

Isn't Qt already switching to Blink?

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

lamawithonel — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:51:02 -0000

Why not do a "firefox-esr" package that conflicts with "firefox"?

Some users want stability. Some users want features. All users deserve choice.

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

guest — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 05:46:52 -0000

So don't use Ubuntu LTS instead go use Fedora or something else that makes sure I HAVE to update so that the changes won't be so drastic. Damn, I was really hoping to use Ubuntu LTS but as Chris said
ESR a long term implimentation of software will become less secure than the regular updates. I used to use 10.04 LTS and it did seem like programs really weren't upgraded at all even though I heard about security threats.
Apparently, something long term will introduce bugs even more than using something that is rapid release. 12.04 LTS is going to be supported for 5 years! Imagine the changes people will have to face by then. New email client ? New media player ? New web browser ? Default search engine ? Boot loader, dev manager, etc...After five years of being used to something?! Better to change it every six or so months so that people don't get too used to something. Not that I can notice any dang visible changes from the last fifteen versions of Firefox but I do notice many differences in Ubuntu so I guess this applies for Ubuntu even more so.
I remember in 10.04 LTS you wouldn't see new tech just security updates and whatnot so I guess that I wouldn't get new improved technologies on the web and off that is constantly evolving. It's cute to be in bed with Google, nay ? I can't get the HTML5 videos to work on any damn computer without Flash. On Firefox at least. Windows or Linux distros alike. Only way I can do that is to jump through hoops of creating a website and embedding the videos into it then viewing that way. Because if I go to YouTube I'm told I need flash. Yes, I have tried joining the HTML5 trial doesn't do anything for me.
Banks...A friend's bank. I won't mention which one anyone hoping to check it for security holes and steal some money can just go look at all banks around the world. In this bank they refuse to use anything but IE old and dead versions at that...I sure as hell wouldn't want to bank there but still that's your only way of accessing that bank. What does one do there install Wine ? Also I see plenty of banks and other sites still have support for 3.X versions not because they have to and that it's the users fault for wanting to stay on a lower version but because the developers don't want to deal with this constant change so that stuff much actually be a bit warped on newer versions. Or newer browsers. Sort of like when one switched from IE to Firefox in the 2.0 era and sites were rendered terribly because no one wanted to fix their code. And like that one bank I mentioned I'm sure they aren't easily hackable. I guess I could tell my friends to stop using it because it's unsecure but try telling that to most end users...

Will Ubuntu also become slower as new versions come out and one stays in LTS ?
I keep seeing benchmarks saying that Ubuntu keeps getting slower and slower and that Windows actually performs better on similar hardware. So, maybe this is one point for staying LTS than some other distros ?

I was going to argue that these points are all moot because LTS is for enterprise users but it's not so forget that. It was also meant for end users and it's not a grand idea for them to use these unsecure, buggy, neglected releases.

As you point out:
The LTS should be stable, secure, supported, predictable

The regular Firefox releases are more secure than the ESR, will be just as
stable (with the significantly larger audience of beta testers) and are better
supported. The 6 weekly releases are also predictable.
Replace Firefox with Ubuntu and ESR with LTS and weekly to monthly ?

My add-ons have still broken a large amount of the time since FF 10
I guess the bottom five percent don't matter. Thank you for that. :)
Yes, that did answer some of my questions as to why not to use Ubuntu.

Oh and to boot LTS won't get the same level of support as rapid release, cool.

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Jonas — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 04:45:44 -0000

I second! Why don't ship Ubuntu X.04 (LTS) with ESR by default and Ubuntu X.10 with latest-stable by default, with having the possibility to change. This shouldn't be to difficult and would match the supposed needs of theirs respective users.

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Stanislav German-Evtushenko — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:50:38 -0000

Points are very clear but, as many times already mentioned, addons compatibility is a problem. Firefox 18 has just come out and been automatically updated on my Work PC (Ubuntu 10.04) and brief addon just stopped to work. Okay, this is just an RSS reader plugin but imagine a company with 1000 Ubuntu PCs and one day they have got a problem with an business critical addon on all of their PCs.

I would suggest to ship Ubuntu with Firefox ESR by default and at the same time allow to install the latest version of Firefox from the same repository, for example:
apt-get install firefox-esr
apt-get install firefox-latest-stable

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Luciana — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 01:30:37 -0000

Firefox and every browser today are going crazy. I'm tired of these fast updates. I think ESR is a nice option.

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Bleck — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:50:19 -0000

One main argument for ESR is "extensions". I don't only want my thunderbird/firefox cores to be fucntionnaly stable I also *need* the extensions I'm using. I can't put at risk the functionnalities they provide, every 6 weeks ! Mozilla people can say what they want about supposed extensions ascending compatibility since #10 version, this is not the reality. Some critical (to me) extensions are yet maintained on an ESR basis. That sounds logical since extensions devoloppers don't all want nor can publish a new release every 6 weeks.

What do FF and TB worth without extensions, compared to competitors ? Not much. Brillant functionnalities are worthless if you destroy your ecosystem. That's what Mozilla acknowledged introducing the ESR. But it's true they promise they won't make it seriously, in terms of security. Saying "you have to choose between security and stability" is just crazy !

Such a crazy policy from Mozilla team transfers the choice to the distributions managers and/or the users. Whatever choice they make they are sure it will be a bad choice. Once aknowledge, it's difficult to say which is the best bad choice...

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Alan Milnes — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:03:49 -0000

Actually Rapid Release is the crazy idea, we just tried to inject a bit of sanity into the discussions :-)

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Alan Milnes — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:02:28 -0000

I'm still not convinced, it's a pity ESR is only 54 weeks but surely LTS is an obvious candidate for this version. What your stats tell me is there are lots of people on LTS who shouldn't be there ....

Re: Why Ubuntu is not using the Firefox ESR

Guest — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:05:40 -0000

I like how at the end you break out large deployments vs small deployments. We currently have about 4,000 LTS clients deployed, and the rate of change and volume of data associated with change matters as much as the actual change does, so I think your assessment of why (and which) people change is spot-on, but I also believe there may be some of us who make alternate choices based on mitigating some rate or volume of change over time, especially when we interact with content vendors who don't innovate with any perceivable frequency. ;)

Re: Retiring the Firefox Stable PPA

Chris Coulson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:07:07 -0000

Did you read the whole article? :-)

Apologies if it wasn't clear, but if not - all Ubuntu releases get the latest version of Firefox now. This means that we deliver the latest version without the need for a PPA at all. Didn't you notice that we just pushed Firefox 11 to Lucid, Maverick, Natty and Oneiric?

Re: Retiring the Firefox Stable PPA

Prabhjot — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:10:07 -0000

But then, What mode of will be adopted to deliver updates?