LinuxQuestions.org
Download your favorite Linux distribution at LQ ISO.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Slackware
User Name
Password
Slackware This Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 05-11-2017, 03:39 PM   #16
bassmadrigal
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Nov 2003
Location: West Jordan, UT, USA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 8,792

Rep: Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656Reputation: 6656

Quote:
Originally Posted by askfor View Post
I have dumped Firefox when they dumped ALSA.
Technically, they didn't dump alsa, they just stopped supporting it with their pre-built binaries. Firefox itself still works with alsa if you build it with it. And Slackware's Firefox still works perfectly with alsa since it includes the --enable-alsa flag during the ./configure.
 
2 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-11-2017, 05:29 PM   #17
askfor
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2016
Posts: 84

Rep: Reputation: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by bassmadrigal View Post
Technically, they didn't dump alsa, they just stopped supporting it with their pre-built binaries. Firefox itself still works with alsa if you build it with it. And Slackware's Firefox still works perfectly with alsa since it includes the --enable-alsa flag during the ./configure.
For how long ? They are about to remove the actual ALSA related code in the very near future. I'd better start getting used to it now.
 
2 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-11-2017, 05:45 PM   #18
askfor
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2016
Posts: 84

Rep: Reputation: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skaendo View Post
Why would you go through all the trouble of repackaging a Debian package when you can just get Pale Moon from SBo?
Actually, I could, and I often do. To be completely honest, I wanted to try it out. There are plenty of DEB packages out there and not all of them have matching Slackbuild. This one is rather simple, there is no installation script. I should try something more complicated.

It is a thing that I like about Slackware, it is relatively easy to install from both RPM and DEB. Especially if the packages date from roughly the same period as your Slackware version. I have been using Red Hat, Fedora and SUSE in the past, and it was not nearly as simple. I think it is because Slackware installs everything (within reason) that you need by default, so shared libraries and other stuff you might need are often there right from the start.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-11-2017, 07:26 PM   #19
the3dfxdude
Member
 
Registered: May 2007
Posts: 720

Rep: Reputation: 344Reputation: 344Reputation: 344Reputation: 344
Quote:
Originally Posted by askfor View Post
For how long ? They are about to remove the actual ALSA related code in the very near future. I'd better start getting used to it now.
This is not true. I've seen several places the mozilla devs state they aren't removing ALSA. This is just one more place I just found, which is a recent statement.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bu...id=1345661#c83

Quote:
You can still build Firefox with ALSA and we're still accepting patches. We're not adding new features to it or trying to keep it working.
And of course they inject more all over the place of the "no-one uses ALSA" and "full of bugs" except ALSA is the subsystem for linux, and pulseaudio uses that. It's sounds like an excuse not based on a real perspective, but one to fit their development agenda.

Slackware flipping on --enable-alsa would have been pretty pointless if they are removing it. But since it is available, and it has always worked just fine (right everyone??), I think it makes total sense. But if the mozilla maintainers end up blocking patches to their code if some bug is out there or that they broke it purposefully, then I'd question mozilla judgement and future use of their browsers. In fact, I've seen recently a couple examples in the corporate space that firefox has been dropped, saying 'DO NOT USE -- it won't work', and to use a supported browser, Chrome, Edge, or Safari. And I confirmed it. That is not a good sign. Pale-moon is unlikely to get anywhere, given where they came from, I'm sorry to say. But there is a sore need for a browser to fill firefox's place if mozilla starts to go under.
 
4 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-11-2017, 08:36 PM   #20
askfor
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2016
Posts: 84

Rep: Reputation: 46
I've searched around a bit. They said that ALSA related code is unmaintained, so it will conflict with something, sooner or later. Or it won't work with later versions of ALSA.

I had a lot of problems FF video playback problems until 45ESR, and I often needed Chromium to watch HD movies. It was much before these ALSA issues. So the idea of replacing Firefox is not new to me.

Early Mozilla browser started much worse than Pale Moon. They had ton of untidy code inherited from Netscape, it was sluggish and needed a lot of memory to run. However, they created a decent browser in the end.

When Firefox started (it was called Phoenix, then Firebird) from fresh code, it was barely usable. Firefox 1.0 was first acceptable version, although it had glitches. People were saying it had no chance, because it was not IE compatible and did not support Microsoft specific features.

Pale moon was just an optimized Firefox build with good old interface for a long time. At some point they decided to fork from Firefox, and it was not so long ago. They are getting better with each release.
 
2 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-12-2017, 01:41 AM   #21
audriusk
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2011
Location: Klaipėda, Lithuania
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 352

Rep: Reputation: 198Reputation: 198
Quote:
Originally Posted by the3dfxdude View Post
This is not true. I've seen several places the mozilla devs state they aren't removing ALSA. This is just one more place I just found, which is a recent statement.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bu...id=1345661#c83



And of course they inject more all over the place of the "no-one uses ALSA" and "full of bugs" except ALSA is the subsystem for linux, and pulseaudio uses that. It's sounds like an excuse not based on a real perspective, but one to fit their development agenda.
That's not what they're saying. From the comment your linked to (emphasis mine):
Quote:
There were too many bugs in the ALSA backend and too few people using it. Pulse Audio does a good job of isolating us from ALSA idiosyncracies and we don't want to duplicate their ASLA debugging effort.
What they're saying is that Firefox ALSA backend (not ALSA the Linux subsystem) is buggy in its current state and that not many people in their userbase use it. The second part (not many people using ALSA backend) seems very likely because most major Linux distros ship PulseAudio these days. They also say that writing code for ALSA the Linux subsystem is hard, and that's another reason why they prefer PulseAudio.

Quote:
Originally Posted by the3dfxdude View Post
In fact, I've seen recently a couple examples in the corporate space that firefox has been dropped, saying 'DO NOT USE -- it won't work', and to use a supported browser, Chrome, Edge, or Safari. And I confirmed it. That is not a good sign.
Supported by whom? By some lazy vendor who only tests with browsers they claim are supported?
 
Old 05-12-2017, 01:52 AM   #22
audriusk
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2011
Location: Klaipėda, Lithuania
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 352

Rep: Reputation: 198Reputation: 198
Quote:
Originally Posted by askfor View Post
When Firefox started (it was called Phoenix, then Firebird) from fresh code, it was barely usable. Firefox 1.0 was first acceptable version, although it had glitches. People were saying it had no chance, because it was not IE compatible and did not support Microsoft specific features.

Pale moon was just an optimized Firefox build with good old interface for a long time. At some point they decided to fork from Firefox, and it was not so long ago. They are getting better with each release.
The web in 2002 (the year Firefox was first released) was so much simpler than the web now.
 
Old 05-12-2017, 06:28 AM   #23
askfor
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2016
Posts: 84

Rep: Reputation: 46
I wonder what API is Firefox 57 going to use in order to run Flash content. Is it still going to be NPAPI or something else ? If Firefox drops NPAPI, Adobe will, almost certainly, drop NPAPI Flash plugin. And that is what Pale Moon is using at the moment.

There was a Freshplayer plugin which allowed Firefox to run Pepperflash, a possible alternative.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-12-2017, 06:33 AM   #24
askfor
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2016
Posts: 84

Rep: Reputation: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by audriusk View Post
They also say that writing code for ALSA the Linux subsystem is hard, and that's another reason why they prefer PulseAudio.
They are cutting corners ever since Google stopped supporting them financially. I suppose they lack resources.
 
Old 05-12-2017, 07:07 AM   #25
audriusk
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2011
Location: Klaipėda, Lithuania
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 352

Rep: Reputation: 198Reputation: 198
Quote:
Originally Posted by askfor View Post
They are cutting corners ever since Google stopped supporting them financially. I suppose they lack resources.
I don't know, but gradually rewriting their browser to be fully multiprocess (Electrolysis) and modernizing their web engine to utilize multiple CPU cores and GPU offloading (Quantum), while doing this in new programming language (Rust) which they're funding development of, doesn't sound like lacking resources to me. Considering that Linux is not the most used platform they're targeting and that majority of users on that platform are using PulseAudio, it looks to me that they're simply spending their resources wisely.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-12-2017, 07:52 AM   #26
askfor
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2016
Posts: 84

Rep: Reputation: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by audriusk View Post
I don't know, but gradually rewriting their browser to be fully multiprocess (Electrolysis) and modernizing their web engine to utilize multiple CPU cores and GPU offloading (Quantum), while doing this in new programming language (Rust) which they're funding development of, doesn't sound like lacking resources to me. Considering that Linux is not the most used platform they're targeting and that majority of users on that platform are using PulseAudio, it looks to me that they're simply spending their resources wisely.
Well, this is a free country, at least where I am posting from. Mozilla is free to do whatever they believe to be the best for them.

I, on the other hand, will surely do what is best for me. That is Vivaldi, which is very configurable and does everything right and Pale Moon which offers "outdated" interface which I like. Firefox does not have anything to offer for me any more, and I don't see why would I waste my time on it. If they shut down the project, I'd probably learn about it from the newspapers.

Last edited by askfor; 05-12-2017 at 07:53 AM.
 
Old 05-12-2017, 08:34 AM   #27
the3dfxdude
Member
 
Registered: May 2007
Posts: 720

Rep: Reputation: 344Reputation: 344Reputation: 344Reputation: 344
Quote:
Originally Posted by audriusk View Post
That's not what they're saying. From the comment your linked to (emphasis mine):


What they're saying is that Firefox ALSA backend (not ALSA the Linux subsystem) is buggy in its current state and that not many people in their userbase use it. The second part (not many people using ALSA backend) seems very likely because most major Linux distros ship PulseAudio these days. They also say that writing code for ALSA the Linux subsystem is hard, and that's another reason why they prefer PulseAudio.
I never said they were speaking of the ALSA subsystem solely either. My comments are about their decision not to support a mature standard available everywhere, one even pulseaudio uses, that they used themselves for years.
 
Old 05-12-2017, 10:39 AM   #28
EYo
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2009
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 190

Rep: Reputation: 153Reputation: 153
Quote:
Originally Posted by elcore View Post
There must be a way to patch the sources and replace the space with underscore, or better yet move the entire thing into ~/.config
Thanks for that proper response, much better than just nit-picking. I don't know about the patch, but you made me curious about how that might get done. Cheers.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-12-2017, 12:37 PM   #29
montagdude
Senior Member
 
Registered: Apr 2016
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 2,011

Rep: Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619Reputation: 1619
Quote:
Originally Posted by EYo View Post
Thanks for that proper response, much better than just nit-picking. I don't know about the patch, but you made me curious about how that might get done. Cheers.
I did separate searches in the source code for both "moonchild" and "productions" separately, but unfortunately I didn't turn up anything that seemed to reference the .moonchild productions directory. It would take some digging to find out how it's set.
 
3 members found this post helpful.
Old 05-12-2017, 01:39 PM   #30
basharx
Member
 
Registered: Nov 2013
Posts: 30

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
Quote:
Originally Posted by askfor View Post
Pale Moon looks like good old Firefox 3.x, runs considerably faster (maybe not page rendering, but old GTK2 interface is very fast). However there seems to be some problems which rarely happen and difficult to reproduce. For example, I was watching movie the other they, and suddenly video stopped at one frame, while audio continued. Closed the browser and started again, everything is fine. Those problems are not serious enough to prevent you from using the browser. Pale Moon does not support DRM, deliberately.
Same rare experience with continuing audio while video is shut down, waiting a while or restarting helps, but this is just a minor issue for me.

Concerning speed, the difference between FF and PM is clear. Obviously, if you're using latest HW you may not notice. I'm using repackaged PM binaries on 14.1 and haven't had a single crash in 2 months.

I'm generally disappointed by what I consider a devolution in web browsing experience where website development has turned into careless integration of zillions of add-ons (often for the most simplistic tasks) into a single long vertical page to cater to mobile users. The result are sparsely populated pages taking ridiculous amounts of CPU cycles to render a few words. Here PM often does a good job on slower HW.
 
4 members found this post helpful.
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
what's the best way to import Firefox bookmarks to Pale Moon? newbiesforever Linux - Software 14 01-30-2017 02:08 AM
[SOLVED] Pale Moon vs Firefox storkus Slackware 35 09-07-2015 01:47 PM
LXer: Want Firefox without Australis? Try Pale Moon LXer Syndicated Linux News 0 08-01-2014 08:51 PM
Pale Moon - A firefox fork coralfang Linux - Software 9 07-16-2014 01:52 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Slackware

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:03 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration