Andrei POPESCU wrote: > Christofer C. Bell wrote: > > John Hasler wrote: > > > It isn't. See <http://www.debian.org/volatile/> . You want backports: > > > <http://backports-master.debian.org/> > > > > No, while that meets the need, I don't think that's what they want. > > The posters agreeing with each other (and I agree with them) are > > looking for something "official." > > But backports are official now (didn't used to),
Things have changed in this area and Firefox is now available from squeeze-backports. But that wasn't always true. And I had forgotten about it since I was using the desktop release track from mozilla.debian.net which has the newer version. debian-backports is tracking unstable which has the ESR stable version. But the newer version from mozilla.debian.net is newer and shadows it. I am mostly fine with the ESR version in unstable and backports. That's great. However for most desktop users wanting to "ride the wave" of the newest available Firefox just like their distant MS cousins do then mozilla.debian.net with the latest version is the better choice for them. > and iceweasel in stable is still usable in many cases, why drop it? I would argue that only because it suckers people into a pitfall without any obvious sign that it is a pitfall. People install it thinking one thing and finding out that it is actually another. Whereas there are a lot of packages in backports. I wouldn't argue to automatically add backports to the sources.list file. Instead I think web browsers have created their own category of package. One that changes very quickly outside the control of user or distro. Because they have become special they need to be handled specially. I applaud mozilla.debian.net for doing so. > > For example, RHEL, while being even "more" stable than Debian (they On RHEL I find it rather unusable without also adding the EPEL repo too. Otherwise the restricted list of packages supported in RHEL proper isn't useful enough to be useful as a desktop. Okay for a dedicated server machine. But even then I chafe at missing functionality. > > support it for a decade instead of 2.5 years), keeps the important > > *desktop* applications (Firefox, OpenOffice) reasonably up to date and > > working (e.g.; Pidgin) when they break due to circumstances outside of Although I see that Firefox is now up to date in RHEL I remember that this was one of the problem points in years leading up to this point in time. I am pretty sure that RHEL previously hadn't had an up to date Firefox unless the user installed it from elsewhere. Bob
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