[HN Gopher] Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem
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Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem
Author : yaks_hairbrush
Score : 81 points
Date : 2023-08-13 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.osnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.osnews.com)
| alentred wrote:
| Having never developed a browser engine, my naive question is why
| is it so hard to develop a new one? We have decent free and/or
| open-source software in other areas, why is it hard to reproduce
| this experience with the browsers?
|
| Or, is the problem in the complexity of the modern web browsing
| experience, and the walled garden created around it by current
| major browser developers (new standards, etc.)?
| a_humean wrote:
| Web browsers are extraordinarily large and complex applications
| that conform to reams and reams of constantly expanding
| standards adding up to tens of millions of lines of code. Their
| complexity and size rivals the operating systems they run on.
| All mainstream browsers today are effectively forks or cosmetic
| skins of a handful remaining browser lineages that have been in
| development for decades now.
|
| Probably the only notable attempts at building something from
| scratch recently is servo and ladybird. Servo was (is) an
| experimental platform to trial new components for Firefox is
| isn't a serious option for everyday use. Ladybird is primarily
| a hobbyist project that isn't a serious option for everyday use
| but has managed to implement a large part of the features of a
| modern working browser. The article called it "crazy", but it
| is impressive how far it's got so far.
|
| Also, all of these browsers are open source with permissive
| licences for the bulk of their source code.
| logdap wrote:
| [dead]
| midasuni wrote:
| As a firefox and desktop linux user I don't see any problem
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Open a new tab and you'll see advertisements in your homepage
| (which afaict you cannot change to a non default page)
|
| Open a 1080p YouTube video and watch your processor get
| slammed. No, I do not want to install an unvetted third party
| plug-in. If nothing else, flag that the browser doesn't support
| hardware acceleration _when playing videos, in easy to
| understand terminology_ so I, and thousands of others don't
| have to go troubleshoot exactly what is causing my computer to
| choke.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Oh and maybe invest in actual Firefox development instead of
| whatever meme tech interests the executive this month...
| bobnamob wrote:
| You can turn off suggested links on the new tab page through
| the cog in the top right corner. That's been the case for
| years
| lastgeniusua wrote:
| not only can you easily turn off any ads or suggestions, but
| you can set custom urls in easily-accessible settings at
| about:preferences#home
| nine_k wrote:
| As a Firefox and Linux user, I do see that problem.
|
| Hardware video acceleration is fine now, and apparently has
| been for some time.
|
| But e.g. Google Meet plainly refuses to blur the video call
| background when run on Firefox. It happily does that when
| running in Chromium.
| userbinator wrote:
| Have you tried changing user-agent header or similar? I'm not
| familiar with your specific example but have encountered
| plenty of sites which complain about "not supported" but work
| fine when UA header is the "right" one.
| nine_k wrote:
| I have, and it did not work last few times :(
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| That seems like a Firefox problem, not a Chromium one.
| thayne wrote:
| As a Firefox on Linux user I also see a problem. It isn't
| that uncommon to see a feature drop on windows and mac before
| linux.
|
| And for a long time, there has been an issue where if you
| update Firefox with a linux package manager, you have to
| restart the whole browser, or the browser stops working. That
| isn't a problem on windows or mac (usually). And it isn't
| something you have to deal with with chromium on linux
| either.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Me neither. It works flawlessly on Fedora.
| teekert wrote:
| Seconded, I have no issues. In fact when I'm not on ff I
| immediately miss the lack of cookie containers and get annoyed
| by the horrible need to log in to and out off different
| accounts all the time.
|
| On ff I sync my add-ons, bookmarks and containers. What's not
| to like?
| amelius wrote:
| Read the entire article.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| They should fire most of the overhead personnel and sock their
| salaries into income producing investments, so when big G closes
| the tap, R&D can continue indefinitely.
|
| Hopefully then they'll stop reinventing tabs, ruining privacy,
| and focus on the aforementioned bugs.
| n_ary wrote:
| The sort of have other revenue generating products. From top of
| my head, they have firefox relay, vpn, a cooperation with
| pocket(getpocket_com) and I see some more test products. They
| are trying but once you offer people something for free, trying
| to side/up-sell your monetized products feel sleezy and a lot
| of reputation hit(see pocket integration causing outrage, or
| brave promoting their crypto bundle thing which you can
| entirely hide and never use).
| sillywalk wrote:
| Mozilla has a revenue problem, sort of like Netscape. It's main
| product is free and doesn't directly generate revenue except
| through Google ads. Using Firefox to get the people who use
| Firefox to use Mozilla's revenue generators - Pocket or VPN
| through ads in the browser won't work.
|
| Google pays it to select it as the default browser, but Firefox'
| tiny declining market probably makes Google want to not to
| continue this except perhaps as a way to avoid monopoly stuff.
| smcleod wrote:
| The world has a chrome problem.
| devit wrote:
| That's obviously infeasible (either it would be bad or it would
| cost too much time/money).
|
| However, maintaining a variant of Ungoogled Chromium or Vanadium
| targeted at desktop Linux would be feasible.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| > The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by
| Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where
| issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the
| Linux side for years or longer.
|
| > The best and most visible example of that is hardware video
| acceleration.
|
| That's not "Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem", that's "Desktop
| Linux has a problem". hardware acceleration was always a pain to
| get working in linux, as a subset of the larger problem of linux
| video drivers having varying levels of support for the plethora
| of features that video cards need to do these days.
|
| Things like this ultimately led me to my current Linux usage:
| Windows host, linux vm, fullscreened on its own virtual desktop.
|
| If I need to do something that linux wasn't going to do
| efficiently, I do it in the windows host. Otherwise, I do it in
| the linux vm.
|
| Anyway, I wonder if any of the problems this person is pointing
| out are going to be made better or worse by wayland
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| I'm using Firefox on Fedora and VAAPI works perfectly fine with
| no issues. In my experience, it's a problem carried from the
| past, and not real limitation anymore.
| hollerith wrote:
| Where do you do most of your web browsing, in the host or the
| VM?
| geophile wrote:
| Can someone knowledgeable comment on the possibility of VivLdi
| becoming the de facto standard browser for Linux? I played with
| it a little, thought it worked well, and most notably, it worked
| well for websites that gave Firefox trouble.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Very low chance: it's another Chromium browser but with
| proprietary modifications. I think Chromium proper would become
| standard before Vivaldi.
| thayne wrote:
| Being proprietary it can't be part of the Debian
| destribution, and the license might be problematic for other
| distros to include as well.
| LorenDB wrote:
| I'd prefer to see Brave be the de facto default. Except for
| some crypto stuff that is bundled by default, it seems to be
| really nice and even ships its own privacy focused search
| engine.
|
| (Disclaimer: I personally don't daily drive Brave, but I would
| consider it if I ever decided to drop Opera.)
| scrum-treats wrote:
| Brave is really showing up in terms of privacy and security
| focused browsing. What's interesting to me is that Mozilla
| had Brendan Eich, and excused him. And today, with Eich at
| the helm, Brave is climbing the ranks while Mozilla finds
| itself in an ever-increasing slump.
| timeon wrote:
| This article pointed out that GNOME Web and Falkon have problem
| as they are WebKit and Chromium based. Is not Vivaldi Chromium
| as well?
| marcodiego wrote:
| Together, Linux + ChromeOS (much closer to standard GNU+Linux
| than Android) have something between 6% and 7% of the desktop. I
| don't remember people saying the same about MacOS when it was
| around that mark.
|
| Of course, we must be realistic. Linux around 6% is very
| different from MacOS at 6%. In that case, they already had
| support from items people complain to this day about Linux not
| having; main examles are msoffice and photoshop.
|
| Nevertheless, Linux on the desktop has never been so good.
| Flatpak (or even AppImages and snaps) allow me to have a "stable
| core" with recently updated software. Support for most hardware
| is much better now (looks like most vendors make sure the
| hardware supports Linux, even though they themselves don't
| announce it). Pipewire and Wayland matured to the point where you
| can finally stream your desktop on Wayland using Pipewire. GNOME
| is snappier today then it was and cleaner and more elegant; of
| course we still need some consistency but windows suffers from
| that too; and, look, it even has thumbnails on the file picker!
| The kernel evolved to a point where desktop is just another well
| supported system: MGLRU and other improvements made latency on
| the desktop even under memory pressure just ideal.
|
| The environment around it also evolved a lot. Many FLOSS software
| are on a quality level today that mostly only professional on
| almost niche areas can't use Linux on the desktop. Consider
| Blender, Godot, Audacity, Inkscape, Firefox, OBS... these things
| are refined, stable, elegant and don't try to steal your
| attention, require periodic payments or throw ads on your face.
| Actually a Linux desktop user feels very sorry when they see a
| "standard" windows user. And I'm not even talking about proton or
| areas where Linux leads or is well established.
|
| So yes, it improved. Nevertheless, I'd love to, but I don't think
| I'll see Linux on the desktop beat windows or MacOS. But, know
| one thing: I don't care. Linux on the desktop has been good
| enough for me for a very long time and it will only get better. I
| just hope someday its market share will be big enough for it to
| no longer be ignored by so many vendors. Watching current growth,
| I don't think that is too far anymore now.
| 7e wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...
|
| This has it at 5.1%. But ChromeOS has a lot of corporate mojo
| making it work. It's only partially open source. A lot of the
| good bits are closed. So that puts Linux at 2.91%. A rounding
| error. For 30 years.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Your data, as of this writing, is from January 23. Consider
| this: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/desktop/worldwide... which fully agrees with your data
| and shows the combination Linux+ChromeOS above 7% in June 23.
|
| Thanks for pointing how fast Linux on the desktop has been
| growing lately.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 3% is probably twice as many as 10 years ago. Pretty good for
| people who aren't selling you anything and aren't asking you
| to use Linux.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| And Krita. Great software.
| Beached wrote:
| I use kubuntu as my daily driver for work for a little over 2
| years now. I still run into daily issues that just make me not
| want to use it for my personal desktop os.
|
| I fret Everytime I update, yet I must update due to work. but I
| have to schedule and plan those updates so that when the whole
| thing takes a shit, I can spend 2 or 3 hours fixing it. Just
| using the built in update utility, or apt upgrade, or really
| anything runs about a 10-20% chance of shit breaking. (I didn't
| do the math)
|
| audio experience is terrible all around, and Bluetooth and wifi
| use out the box, is meh at best for range and stability.
|
| I've tried a dozen distros to see if the grass is greener
| somewhere else, it isn't, and I have to work, I don't have an
| hour every day to fiddle, I have to bill clients.
|
| good support is almost non existent, IF you get help, it's from
| some greater than thou righteous asshole who suggests you just
| rewrite the drivers yourself and create a pull request.
|
| while I agree it is close, there is a still a LOT of 'polish'
| that needs to come where I will feel confident that hitting
| update doesn't ruin my day, and that when I'm done with a
| stress filled day of work, I'll be able to boot up and play my
| games without having to troubleshoot for an hour first.
| skulk wrote:
| Your overall point is valid and I don't want to minimize your
| struggles, but I do have a few questions.
|
| > I fret Everytime I update, yet I must update due to work.
| but I have to schedule and plan those updates so that when
| the whole thing takes a shit, I can spend 2 or 3 hours fixing
| it. Just using the built in update utility, or apt upgrade,
| or really anything runs about a 10-20% chance of shit
| breaking. (I didn't do the math)
|
| What... are you doing? Do you have some strange use-case that
| might be causing this? Since 2014 I've daily driven debians,
| Arch, and now NixOS and updates that break my system have
| been exceedingly rare. I don't remember a single time Arch
| pacman -Syu broke my system, nor apt, and, well, NixOS
| doesn't count ;)
|
| > good support is almost non existent, IF you get help, it's
| from some greater than thou righteous asshole who suggests
| you just rewrite the drivers yourself and create a pull
| request.
|
| Where do you ask for help? How do you ask it? I've never
| received such a dickish response when I go on IRC and ask
| questions, no matter how stupid. I'm consistently impressed
| at how dedicated some community members are to helping
| newbies out. What you're saying is completely opposite to my
| experience.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's got to be the hardware. Most people don't have two or
| three hours fixing their desktop after an update. I use
| Debian Testing, and I can't remember the last time an update
| went bad; it's been years.
|
| If you use bleeding-edge hardware with an OS that vendors
| aren't specifically targeting, expect problems. I gave up
| trying to put Linux on random new laptops, so I've researched
| compatibility ahead of every purchase I've made in the last
| 10 years. Also, if you buy from a vendor that specializes in
| Linux, there will be a markup, but you will also get
| assurances and support.
|
| We can pretend like that's a failure on the part of Linux,
| but Apple only gives you like five choices of machine, while
| Linux runs at least somewhat on every random computer-like
| object.
| martinald wrote:
| Feel like I'm on a different planet to a lot of these
| desktop Linux users.
|
| I've used desktop Linux since the late 90s - Redhat 6 was
| the first disto I used.
|
| I have had uncountable complete system failures since then.
| As the parent says doing a dist-upgrade has a very non-0
| chance of completely bricking the system. I've even had apt
| brick itself multiple times through normal upgrades.
|
| Linux on the desktop for me over the past 25 years has been
| hilariously unreliable, by far the most buggy software I
| have used over my career.
|
| Linux on the server is flawless and I use it all the time,
| but the amount of software installed compared to desktop
| usage is tiny, and I don't do dist upgrades on servers
| (would rebuilt it onto another machine).
|
| For me after 25 years of various attempts the most reliable
| desktop "Linux" is actually Windows with WSL2. All hardware
| works great, sleep works, Bluetooth works, display scaling
| works, WiFi6E works etc. And I have a great Linux machine
| thru WSL2.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| I've been using Linux as my daily driver, and primary OS, for
| going on four years now I think. I've only ever had things
| break once, and it was because I installed competing versions
| of NVidia drivers. Even then, it was painless (for me) to fix
| as booting the machine to a terminal allowed me to "apt
| remove" that shit in less than a minute.
|
| I had some issues with Pulseaudio but overall they were
| minor, and now Pulseaudio has been swapped for something else
| and I don't even know what it is... because it works well
| enough.
|
| I'm not trying to say you didn't experience problems, but
| your experience is the opposite of mine. I had more problems
| with Windows than I've had Linux. Windows absolutely ruined
| installs and disks on bad updates I more times than I can
| count. And the networking stack isn't dog shit like modern
| MacOS (I still use Macs for work), plus unlike MacOS I can
| use a performant GPU to play games or do research.
| edvinbesic wrote:
| > I'm genuinely worried about the state of browsers on Linux, and
| the future of Firefox on Linux in particular. I think it's highly
| irresponsible of the various prominent players in the desktop
| Linux community, from GNOME to KDE, from Ubuntu to Fedora, to
| seemingly have absolutely zero contingency plans for when Firefox
| enshittifies or dies, despite everything we know about the
| current state of the browser market, the state of Mozilla's
| finances, and the future prospects of both.
|
| So what are you proposing then? It seems so irresponsible to
| complain about new-buzzword-shittification of something thousands
| of people contribute to and offer no contribution in return.
| politelemon wrote:
| To compare, how is Chrome or Chromium's attention to Linux
| Desktop, in terms of features and fixes?
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| whatever drips off from Chrome OS support....
|
| Chrome on Linux had a random weird 3d grey border for years
| which was only fixed when it was announced ChromeOS was going
| to switch to the Linux desktop version.
| thayne wrote:
| It depends. IIRC chrome/chromium had support for video
| acceleration on linux long before Firefox. And had better
| support for WebRTC using pipewire on linux. OTOH chrome's
| support for native wayland lagged far behind Firefox.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| People here have talked about Mozilla's financial issues, but so
| far nobody has posted the donation link. If you use Firefox or
| Thunderbird and wish to continue doing so, here's the link:
| https://donate.mozilla.org/
| e2le wrote:
| Thunderbird collects donations separately from Mozilla.
|
| https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/
| trashburger wrote:
| Please don't donate to Mozilla, they have more than enough but
| refuse to accelerate Firefox development.
|
| https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...
| SushiHippie wrote:
| > In an ideal world, the major stakeholders of the Linux desktop
| - KDE, GNOME, the various major distributions - would get
| together and seriously consider a plan of action. The best
| possible solution, in my view, would be to fork one of the major
| browser engines (or pick one and significantly invest in it), and
| modify this engine and tailor it specifically for the Linux
| desktop.
|
| Is it really the best solution to create a fork?
|
| Why not invest in people to directly work on Firefox?
|
| The author even mentions a few paragraphs before that sentence
| that maintaining a browser is hard:
|
| > The problem here is that making a capable browser is actually
| incredibly hard, as the browser has become a hugely capable
| platform all of its own. Undertaking the mammoth task of building
| a browser from scratch is not something a lot of people are
| interested in [...]
|
| And who guarantees that the fork will further exist without weird
| funding?
|
| EDIT: sorry, after reading my comment again, I think it sounds a
| bit snarky. English is not my native language, and I don't know
| how to phrase these questions better, so they don't sound that
| way.
| NuSkooler wrote:
| 100%
|
| How the author arrives at the conclusion that the answer is to
| create _another_ browser is beyond me.
|
| Advocate for Firefox. Invest in Firefox. There you go.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think you concluded with a very key point, though.
|
| > And who guarantees that the fork will further exist without
| weird funding?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I also think "the major stakeholders of the Linux desktop --
| KDE, GNOME, various major distributions" are not necessarily in
| _any_ better shape than Mozilla is, unless you think IBM is
| going to open their wallet...
| lelanthran wrote:
| The problem is that you cannot donate to Firefox's development.
|
| Donations all to to Mozilla, and if the article is to be
| believed, Mozilla won't use the extra money or FF for Linux.
|
| Hell, in the past we've seen Mozilla divert funds _away_ from
| Firefox to support unrelated stuff.
|
| There is currently no way, right now, to give financial support
| to Firefox development without forking it.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Yeah this is the issue.
|
| I don't have any money giving Mozilla money to go mismanage.
|
| However I would be willing to schedule recurring donations
| for Firefox and Thunderbird development.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Mozilla has boatloads of money, but they don't seem keen on
| increasing investing in FF- if anything, cutting servo seemed
| quite the opposite.
|
| To me, Mozilla is like the Wikimedia foundation- they take in a
| lot of money, but it seems like very little actually goes to
| the projects people think of when they hear the name.
|
| Maybe that isn't a bad thing- surely there are worthy projects
| they could be investing in, in addition to FF or Wikipedia -
| but supporting them isn't as simple as offering more bodies in
| seats, because lack of money and talent isn't what is holding
| them back.
| NuSkooler wrote:
| I'm confused. I get a new Firefox version on my Windows,
| Android, and Linux machines consistently, with new features,
| fixes, and the latest web tech minus the privacy nightmares
| Google is trying to feed, at a regular basis. How are they
| not investing in FF?
| elaus wrote:
| The person you replied to did not say that Mozilla is _not_
| investing in Firefox. I too am worried that Mozilla was
| cutting Servo development, in a time where Firefox already
| has a problem keeping up with new web features.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| To be fair, its still got plenty of warts on OS X too. After all
| this time, putting Firefox in full screen mode results in
| seriously wonky & intolerable behavior. Its the only app I have
| that shifts all its chrome (toolbars, tabs) when you bang the top
| of the screen. Compare this to Safari (only the menu shifts). No,
| hiding all of it is not the solution.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That doesn't happen to me at all. What happens is that the
| menubar shows, and the top bar of the browser (where the
| back/forward buttons and the URL bar are) slides down to give
| space to the window bar (with the zoom and close buttons) over
| the top of the browser.
|
| That's all. All the content, sidebar, etc stays stationary.
|
| It's true that Safari does it better, but honestly not by much.
| TillE wrote:
| The only real complaint I have about Firefox on macOS is that
| fullscreening a video takes forever. Safari does it twice as
| fast and with a smooth animation instead of blanking the
| screen.
|
| Otherwise I find the experience on Windows and Mac very
| similar.
| linuxandrew wrote:
| As a long-time Firefox user (or rather, LibreWolf and Mull now)
| the biggest problem as I see it is websites that no longer
| support it. Compatibility is constantly getting worse as
| Chrome/Blink monopolises web dev and testing.
|
| I'm considering writing letters to some of the sites that have
| the biggest issues and raising it as an issue.
|
| Otherwise, Firefox is mostly fine. I have a few gripes with it
| and Moz are mismanaging their projects, but desktop Linux is
| hardly their #1 issue.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| ... I thought I was one of the few Linux users left using
| Firefox. All of my coworkers are using Chromium.
| predictabl3 wrote:
| I'm just wondering how many of the Firefox/Linux devs actually
| test on, or use, Wayland. (Based on how often it seems to regress
| on Nightly)
| kleiba wrote:
| What problem? I've been using Linux with Firefox for at least 15
| years, and I've never thought this to be a problem.
|
| Linux is not an operating system for the unwashed masses, it's a
| specialist operating system for more technical oriented folks.
| It's less polished in many areas and requires some jumping
| through hoops at times as we all know. In return, you get a
| vastly better user experience _if you 're the right kind of
| user_.
|
| Whenever I am placed in front of a standard Windows install, I'm
| shaking my head in astonishment and wonder how people put up with
| that. Yet, if I were a standard Windows user placed in front of a
| linux machine, I'd probably do the same.
|
| We're just a different species of users. If linux users cared as
| much about browser specifities as they did about other things,
| I'm sure they would already be fixed. But the truth is: as a
| long-time linux user I can state that Firefox is just fine.
| Really, it is. For me. And probably for many other happy linux
| users too.
|
| Does that mean if couldn't be improved? Of course not. But show
| me the software for which you couldn't say the same. Okay, maybe
| Emacs. Just kidding.
| polyamid23 wrote:
| Is there a consensus on how correct browser market share
| calculations are? Google does apparently not even know what OS I
| am using.
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(page generated 2023-08-13 23:02 UTC)