[SOLVED] Latest Firefox stable in Slackware

enorbet · 07-03-2019, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZhaoLin1457

Let's see the bright side: most likely the support for ALSA from Firefox is doomed probably in no more than several major releases. Because they said clear and sound that they will NOT write a sound server on Firefox, just for the sake of some superstitions and FUD ventilated in some forums.

I let this pass until I saw it quoted and had to come to terms that I find this point of view not only dangerous to the desire for power, versatility and personal preference that gave birth to Linux as a viable option but also personally callous and supercilious. How can you read the concerns of people involved in use cases where Pulseaudio measurably reduces facility by orders of magnitude and summarize that as "superstitions and FUD"? and write off the people involved in and concerned by those actual limitations as mere "haters" of no concern to you beyond a pesky obstacle that needs to be swept aside?

I can only speak for myself but I don't threaten you or your preferences in any way. I'm actually pleased for those that find PA "just what the doctor ordered" and I have stated so repeatedly. Why do you so nonchalantly minimize and threaten mine? How is this "any skin off your nose"?

garpu · 07-03-2019, 07:16 AM

I realize that I'm an outlier in the Linux ecosystem these days and that I have a rather specialized use for Linux, namely audio production. Pulse is awful for that, and I brought up Firefox not defaulting to ALSA without being rebuilt as a "gotcha" for anyone else who might be interested in anything not the ESR release. I honestly do not care what other people use or don't use for their sound production. This is hardly FUD. Except OSS. Does anyone actually use OSS anymore?

rpedrica · 07-03-2019, 09:00 AM

This thread is related to the technical aspects of running latest Firefox on Slackware - can we either leave the politics or move it to another thread?

NightSky · 07-03-2019, 08:31 PM

@tobyl I'm on slackware64-14.1 is there a little tutorial to upgrade from firefox 49.0 I let it go till gmail pushed me into their most basic mail. lol I don't upgrade anything unless I absolutely have to & then forget which is why I'm stuck agian w/o an old printer. Cheers & thanks kiddo

ehartman · 07-04-2019, 04:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NightSky

@tobyl I'm on slackware64-14.1 is there a little tutorial to upgrade from firefox 49.0

I do not think that is possible without at least upgrading to 14.2, but preferably -current. The binaries from mozilla will not run in 14.1 without crashing and, of course, they will need PulseAudio support which 14.1 doesn't have and the compile tools in 14.1 are TOO old to be able to compile it from source. Even in 14.2 they had to be updated (and rust needed to be added to /extra) for to go beyond 52.x esr:

Quote:

Hey folks, in light of Firefox 52.x ESR reaching EOL a few hours ago, I'm providing some updates. This required adding Rust and a newer version of LLVM as optional updates for Slackware 14.2.

(from the 14.2 ChangeLog).
And that was only for the 60.x ESR version, which is almost at its end-of-life too.
Probably either 68 or 69 will be the next ESR one. 68.0 is at beta14 state at the moment so will be released real soon.

Others may be able to tell you if it's possible to compile 67.x in Slackware 14.2, I never tried that myself.

Petri Kaukasoina · 07-04-2019, 07:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ehartman

Probably either 68 or 69 will be the next ESR one. 68.0 is at beta14 state at the moment so will be released real soon.

Code:

Release Date 	Release 	ESR
2019-07-09 	Firefox 68 	Firefox 60.8; 68.0
2019-09-03 	Firefox 69 	Firefox 60.9; 68.1
2019-10-22 	Firefox 70 	Firefox 68.2
2019-12-10 	Firefox 71 	Firefox 68.3

tobyl · 07-04-2019, 05:08 PM

@Nightsky I remember (it's several years back) when I tried to help you with setting up cups for your printer :-)

I totally get your reluctance to upgrade unnecessarily, although I am in the opposite camp and try to keep everything at the latest version, I run current with alien's kde plasma (which I think is excellent)

As such I am not really in a position to advise on firefox on 14.1 but ehartman's post I suggest is spot on.

So if you want firefox with the latest security updates I would suggest you bite the bullet and upgrade to 14.2 or current.
Current isn't as scary as it might sound and works in practice as a rolling release, not perhaps for enterprise/production but perfectly suitable for personal use.

tobyl

ttk · 07-04-2019, 10:44 PM

Just to provide a data point, I use recent Pale Moon releases with my Slackware64-14.1 system, and it's never been a problem.

So if building/installing the latest Firefox really is impossible on 14.1, that might be an option (with the usual caveats -- the "classic Firefox" look and feel (which I prefer), no integrated pdf viewer (which I prefer), restricted plugin selection).

mats_b_tegner · 07-08-2019, 01:32 PM

Firefox ESR 60.8 and ESR 68.0 are available on Mozilla's FTP site today:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.8.0esr/
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/68.0esr/

TheRealGrogan · 07-08-2019, 01:42 PM

Firefox 68.0... if anyone is trying to build it, delete obj-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu after unpacking, or it will fail with python errors on creating virtualenv symlinks, because that directory is erroneously included in the tarball. That's folly, obviously, as it's not the only arch in the world and it will cause that error if it's your arch.

TheRealGrogan · 07-08-2019, 09:41 PM

I have been angry today, that Firefox 68 no longer respects GTK styling for the scrollbar. It defaults to very ugly, thin, hard to grab, hard to see when short, grey scrollbars and grey scrollbar track. It uses my GTK+ style in preferences pages in the browser, but not on sites. This is likely related to website CSS being able to change it, my guess is that they enforced it so that would work consistently. I have a black GTK+ style with glowing orange to black gradient, that I am very fond of.

I can't get my hover gradient, but I can at least override the behaviour by creating a chrome/userContent.css file so I can see and grab my scrollbar again.

Code:

:root{
   scrollbar-color: #BA4A00 #000000;
   scrollbar-width: auto;
}

Based on information here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...crollbar-color

The first colour value is for the scrollbar ("thumb") and the second is for the scrollbar track. As far as I can tell, scrollbar-width can be thin, auto, or none, with auto being OS defaults.

NOTE: In Firefox 68, they have disabled user customizations by default. Supposedly for "performance" they are no longer parsing userContent.css, userChrome.css, userChrome.xml etc. and you have to enable it in about:config

Toggle this value to True

Code:

toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets

3rensho · 07-09-2019, 01:10 AM

Quote:

TheRealGrogan
Firefox 68.0... if anyone is trying to build it, delete obj-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu after unpacking, or it will fail with python errors on creating virtualenv symlinks

I built 68.0 this morning before I saw this post and it built without any errors and runs fine.

rpedrica · 07-09-2019, 01:37 AM

I just went ahead and removed the obj-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu folder after unpacking, repacked and built. No issues.

TheRealGrogan · 07-09-2019, 02:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3rensho

I built 68.0 this morning before I saw this post and it built without any errors and runs fine.

I used this release tarball, and the python scripts couldn't create symlinks ("file exists") because that directory was there, and populated with a _virtualenvs tree.

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/....source.tar.xz

3rensho · 07-09-2019, 02:07 AM

I always get my sources from here - https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/