Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Goes for World Download Record
Kelson writes "For the upcoming release of Firefox, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."
Are they trying to kill their own servers or what?
What's the current record? I'd expect MS service packs to set a pretty high bar. Also, how are they counting? If Debian get Firefox 3 through into testing on the day (which I doubt), would an install via aptitude count, or are they only counting direct downloads from Mozilla?
Get your botnets ready :)
Since presumably my Firefox 2 will bug me to update to 3 as soon as it's released?
Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases. They should release when it's ready, and we'll get it when we think it's ready. What's the big rush?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
because many popular plugins are not 3.0 ready :-(
...who has Mozilla's petard ready for them to hoist?
... these are the same idiots that thought that a beta of windows vista was the single largest software download: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/06/windows-vista-for-guinness-world.html
... and apparently there is no "world record" to break anyway: http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/05/mozillas-latest-firefox-launch.html
show of hands: who downloaded a linux dvd iso larger than 3.5 gigabytes before vista beta was released?
and, are they not going to consider the millions of copies of, say, internet explorer 7, downloaded the first day it was forced through as an automatic update? or how many downloads of itunes are there in a day when apple _requires_ an update?
Go for the record Mozilla! If you get it, you might even get a place right next to the Most Marshmallows Stuffed Into A Person's Mouth record!
You clearly haven't worked with Fx3 yet. At first I was skeptical about the new smart bookmarks and address bar, but now that I've used it for a month or two (starting with beta 2) I'm quite pleased with it. The address bar basically does exactly the same as it always has, except now it actually does an on the fly substring search in your history instead of just giving an arbitrarily sorted list of previously visited sites. I would dare say this is one of the biggest improvements to the web browsing experience in the last several years.
Overall downloads of Devils0wn WinXP Pro Corporate the day it came out
Weird, I have the release candidate, you know you can still actually use as a location bar and ignore the search, it still drops down and give suggestions of previously typed in URLs
Don't see the problem
The important one is how fast we can /. the web site :)
If you can't be good, be good at it!
I'm not getting the release until I know for sure it won't crash hard on my Macs, like the beta I tried did. And that it won't delete my cookies, like the beta did.
I'd really like to see continued support for the old style of searching in the url bar, too, but I doubt that will happen. And the new look is just uglier.
Currently USA way ahead followed by Japan, Spain then Poland. Not really the top four I would have guessed.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
Completely opposite to the ideals of capitalism, those swines are trying to topple the world order with their no-cost merchandise.
However, few can say that Firefox is a software which you shouldn't own a copy of. Let's show them that enterpreunist powers rule with a firm iron hand and instead of criminally downloading a free version, buy a CD version of firefox on that particular day.
I think this a great way for Mozilla to publicise Firefox and increase its market share. And I pledged, of course. I look forward to Firefox 3.
I have used Firefox for a few years and love it's potential. But it has always been buggy and I was forced into v3 when I updated Ubuntu recently and I think it's got worse! It crashes more now, they have changed features that I loved (like the way you save U/N and P/W) and on top of that most of my plugins don't work anymore :-(
Look, all 18 computer uses have pledged.
And something Opera invented first! (Among other things like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures in a browser, a zoom feature that also resizes images, etc, etc.). And Opera 9.50 even searches the contents of pages you have visited for more WIN.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
will be counted most probably. I dont know of many linux users who download directly from mozilla website. Most would use a package from their distribution which generally is not available on the same day (and even if it is, how will they count those downloads).
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
If they set a record - they'll be in the news.
If they are so successful that the servers go down temporarily - they'll definitely be in the news.
As you can see, just submitting the idea has put them in the news. This is a great idea for a company with growing market share.
Speaking of download servers;
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies NOT crashing under the load.
Yeah, I know, I know, clustering download servers isn't the best way to do a server farm but this is slashdot.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Spam your friends, useless news which doesn't matter, omg lets get lots of hits for mozillas download page! Who needs missions to mars and particle colliders when we have awesome news like this!?!
This might be the most senseless Guinness record ever, and that says a lot. It's measure of nothing. It's not even a measure of Firefox's popularity. Because bulk of the download counts will be generated via some downloading scripts. Even they allow one download per IP, there are proxies. Number of downloads won't nearly equal the number of PEOPLE who downloaded Firefox that day.
I mean it can't go down in the books as Firefox was downloaded by 2 million people on that day. Maybe 2 million times, out of which half was generated by 300,000 download scripts. I am not sure about you but to me that doesn't sound all that impressive.
It won't even helps spread firefox that much, as all the pledged downloadees will be firefox users.
Entirely pointless!
Possibly the only more pointless thing that this is my rather elaborate rant against it.
A not only history, it also searches your bookmarks, which is something that I've always wondered why it wasn't implemented before.
Now you don't have to navigate your deep bookmark folders for that link, just start typing the name and it appears directly under your cursor.
Well, it's rather hard to invent something second.
To stay on topic though the suggestions for URL completion take ages to appear in Opera, at least on my system, while FF3 is blazing fast in that regard. Rendering time, Opera still rules of course.
I'm marking "Download Day" on my calendar right now.
I have a big circle around 2008, and a thin one around 2009 too, just in case the news gets any more vague.
Hehe, Opera fans are the Browser War equivalent of "Frist P0st!". Not really adding anything, just making sure everyone knows: We had that feature first! No, look at us! Over here!
If Opera has so many great features so far ahead of everyone else, why is its usage still somewhere around 1% on a good day? If Opera can figure that out, maybe they'd get somewhere.
I think this is a cool idea. There are still lots of people who don't know there are other browsers in existence; when they open IE they say they're opening "the internet." Anything that makes the news and makes them aware of alternate browsers is good - especially if it's "hey this thing is really popular." For many people, that's the best argument for trying it.
Mozilla seems to have done pretty well by harnessing the power of fanatic users so far - remember the big newspaper ads? And check out the "pledge map" on the site. Think how proud you'd be to see that you're one of a very few people in your country who has pledged to download it. Kind of a mix of national pride and geek pride.
Every web developer's dream is a world where all users have more standards-compliant browsers, and IE is forced to follow suit. I say hooray for almost anything that makes that closer to reality.Could they track the number of downloads if they used bittorrent? Also, if their goal is a record number of downloads for Firefox, do they want to set up an additional hurdle for people? "First, you have to download and install one of these other programs. No wait, we can explain why. Come back."
Actually, I recall from previous discussions that tabbed browsing existed before Opera.
But it's a nice, though quite unused piece of software. Firefox has won me over thanks to its great extendability.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I use firefox portable at uni, as I am unable to install software, portable apps is a great way to stick with OOo and firefox and filezilla and notepad++. But it is unlikely that Firefox will release a portable version of firefox 3 on release day. Debian/Ubuntu releases are a bit behindtoo, so unless Ubuntu manages to stay in time (which I doubt) and the Australian mirror stays in time with official Ubuntu (even less likely) then i doubt I will update to firefox 3 at home either. But shit, i'll download a copy for windows anyway! Why the hell not!
like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
would it be possible to counter-act the download count by trying to upload the installer back to the server?
portfolio
Come on Lesotho, wake up.
Also, I'm sure it's been said, but I hope they torrent this thing, else we'll have the record for most smoked servers since CNN got simultaneously Farked, Slashdotted, and Dugg for the last Britney Spears media stunt.
ya, and by the same logic, if firefox is so damn good, why does the IE has 75% marketshare.
captcha: divisive
Well, it's rather hard to invent something second.
Well, most people who submit patents to the USPTO don't seem to think so.Actually, I've been using Fx3 since beta1. I still am not really keen on the thing. Unless I make sure to keep my bookmarks and history trimmed down, it freezes my system for a few seconds as it trudges through things. This is irritating, especially when I was just wanting to type in an address real quick and not have possible matches pulled up. It consumes more time in searching for possible results than it saves me in typing.
Some way of reverting to the old functionality would be nice.
Maybe they need more silly publicity stunts like this one.
So, who's the current world record holder? I'd ask Norris McWhirter but he died.
Netscape cost me money.
I needed the "Deluxe" edition to get a dialer to connect to the internet with Windows 3.x
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Uhhhh... maybe because it comes preinstalled with the operating system? At least Opera and Firefox have to be intentionally downloaded and installed, so comparing those two browsers makes sense.
Its not the same logic, its ignoring important usage skewing variables.
Beny
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
I looked at the pledge map last night on firefox 3b5. It decided to cache the data and now it won't update it (even after page refresh). So yeah, from firefox 3 it looks like the firefox 3 pledge is a total failure. Ironic?
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
Whenever Opera fans jump into conversations like this, I'm reminded of this comic.
That said, I'm quite fond of what Opera has done for mobile devices. Opera mini is far and away the best mobile browsing solution for virtually any hand-held device (particularly Windows Mobile devices). I recommend it to almost everyone I know who uses the web on their phones, and I use it myself.
Nevertheless, I'm writing this in Firefox 3. I've downloaded Opera here and there for a lark, but always end up back on Firefox. So you raise a good point: Why is the Opera installed base so low? It is a good browser.
http://zooomr.com/photos/darin/4957470/
This is hardly some official event where China has a veto vote, so I see no real need to appease the Chinese warlords on this issue and avoid calling Taiwan Taiwan. Unless of course the team wants to take the stance of Taiwan is part of China, in which case they should just count it as part of China and make no distinction.
This trying to make both sides happy stuff is just silly because the 'right answer' is neither China, or Taiwan, but will never be 'Chinese Taipei'.
As a precursor, maybe there should be an intentional attempt to slashdot their servers first! Although right now it appears to be running fine despite the link posted in the article.
:)
There's enough accidental slashdotting of sites, surely if we really tried even the firefox website might struggle
Doesn't MS Win Spam or malwear or some exploit hold that record already ? ;p
I want to meet that one person in Burundi who has pledged to download Firefox 3.
As long as the major plugin issues are resolved, I will download and use it. I have to remove it and go back to Firefox 2 because so many plugins I use didn't work.
Fair comment, but, I think you've somewhat missed the point.
Mozilla's primary target audience is people who already know about Firefox and would probably download it anyway - so Slashdot would be the best place for someone to promote this goal for a specific day. (I also have to assume that this is not the only site that has heard about Mozilla's goal for Firefox.)
This is what happens when marketing doesn't discuss their "brilliant" plans with engineering...
Which is all fine and good, if you don't have a lot of bookmarks. If, on the other hand, you have a rather full history and lots of bookmarks, the bar freezes for a few seconds while it has to search through everything you've visited and all your bookmarks to try to find the thing you're looking for. And heaven help you if you've got many pages with similar titles in the history. In the old address bar, pages appeared chronologically, so you could easily go to the most recently visited page out of the set. Now, the pages appear in an arbitrary order, making such navigation difficult.
No. The grandparent is right, I'm not downloading Firefox 3 until there's an extension to make the location bar act like the location bar from Firefox 2.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
2. Being open source already gives Firefox a marketing boost in the evangelical circles of the FOSS/FLOSS community.
3. Extensions really make FireFox shine. Having a choice of thousands of customizations and enhancements available via Extensions (now called Add Ons) makes FireFox really geeky keen. Though Opera does offer plug-ins (as do most browser AFAIK), none surpasses Firefox in terms of quantity and quality.
which is totally what she said
They had a while where they were giving away registration codes for free. I got one, and tried Opera, can't remember why I didn't stick with it.. *shrug* I have no problems with firefox :) IE is ugly, and traditionally the least secure browser known to mankind.
which is totally what she said
which is totally what she said
You must be one of these two guys that make up the whole Opera market share! Wow! :D
This might sound dumb, but I wish the new address bar would go away. My laptop gets passed around the house, and I don't want my browsing history pop up to all my family members.
They don't care, so they're not snooping around (I don't live with them normally, there was a death in the family so I've come back home for a bit) but they don't appreciate my youporn stuff popping up in their face because of that silly autocomplete stuff. How can I got back to the old way?
-Bucky
The FireFox updater could opt to install the new FoxTunes (I made this up, but it sounds like a cool name!) 'update' while it takes care of the browser as well.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Go to about:config and set browser.urlbar.oldstyle to true.
Sometimes people don't know when to quit... I haven't used FF3 yet so I don't know if it applies but I finally gave up on WinAmp when it started looking too much like WMP. I had used WinAmp starting around 10 years ago (way before napster ruined everything :P ) It was a sleek, small little program. Then they released a new version that added a bunch of "features" they were "missing" that WMP had. I guess they hadn't considered that that was the very reason people like me were using it. At that point I just gave up and went back to using crappy old WMP (they'd finally added MP3 support by that point anyway).
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I thought there was going to be a FF RC2 as well. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-3-0-Release-Candidate-2-RC2-Gets-the-Green-Light-86752.shtml
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Not until they have 6,602,224,175 pledges. And that was of July last year, so it's a lot more than that now.
Most ISPs in that period provided software... I know that when I signed up for my first Internet connection in 1994, they sent me a CD with Trumpet Winsock on it.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I won't be downloading it. In the latest Ubuntu release, Firefox 3 beta 5 (or whatever version) is running like molasses. And, I still have problems with menus dropping down behind flash movies. I haven't really researched these, yet. But, I thought Firefox 3 was supposed to be a major performance improvement over 2. And, the flash thing should just work.
I hate the new address bar. It's too convoluted. It's hard to read the entries, in my opinion. I'm sure there's a config option for this, but why would it be the default setting? It's hideous.
Hold it right there, Mister!
Anyone who has ever ever gone through NSFW stuff (I once heard a joke: 99% people say they watch porn, the rest lie about it), knows that "awesomebar" sucks.
I am currently using Firefox 3.0 nightly builds, I upgrade it everyday and I will be upgrading it the day 3.0 is released, simply because they have fixed so many memory leaks and crashes, that when I tried going back to 2.0, it was nigh impossible to do anything.
But that does not mean Firefox developers don't make decisions for me! It is kind of like Windows. And with every bug report that I file it becomes more and more obvious that they design everything with Windows users in mind.
I don't blame it for this decision. Before you start yelling let me just say that they are actually not concentrating on "Windows" but "majority users". For this decision I cannot really blame them.
I just hope I had good C++ skills so that I could fork it myself.
If you were keen enough on the results you would have found this:
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/70b4365114d421ac/eecf1646700933ef
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.feedback.firefox/browse_thread/thread/007f48a667be7748
Or the best: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.urlbar.richResults
They disabled the option long time ago.
And "oldbar" extension just changes the UI - firefox still searches through everything you ever visited.
I should know better than answering to AC, but...I'm sorry, what?!
:/ )
Opera is, and always been so much faster than Firefox (which is actually beaten by Seamonkey in that regard...) it is absurd.
The only two explanations:
a) something is messed up in your system in a way that affects Opera but doesn't affect Firefox
b) sites you frequently visit are holding on to "best viewed in IE" mentality (only now it's replaced by "...in IE & Firefox"...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Opera didn't invent tabbed-browsing.
Perhaps you should ask other way around...why people in many places don't care about flaws of FF?
Because in this ex Warsaw packt country of mine Opera popularity is on par with Firefox...might have something to do with how well it performs on slower machines, for example.
One that hath name thou can not otter
You're probably aware of this yourself, but there always seem to be a few people who haven't gotten the news, so if they're reading this...
Back when Opera was first released, most browsers did cost money. Even Netscape technically had a price tag for commercial use. (Though I suspect most people just downloaded it without paying.)
When Microsoft released IE for free, it destroyed the business model of selling a browser. Netscape scrambled, trying to find a new business model, and eventually was bought by AOL who invested in the browser as a bargaining chip against Microsoft. Opera tried things like putting ads in the toolbar.
Finally, in 2005, Opera dropped the price tag and ads entirely. Of course, Firefox's big boost came in 2004, so as far as marketshare was concerned, it was too little, too late.
My original idea stands then. If someone really hates 3 so much, just keep using 2. At least until some new HTML standard comes out, or some indispensable add-on that is FF3 only. Meh. I hardly ever use the address bar, and when I have I've found the in depth URL/title display quite cool looking - didn't realise it did bookmarks as well
which is totally what she said
To the best of my knowledge, IE does not have this. Opera has it (and searches page contents as well, though IMO Firefox's current UI makes it easier to spot pages at a glance), but only in the current 9.50 beta release.
IIRC, these features first appeared in Opera last September, and in Firefox last November (not counting nightly builds). I have no idea how long the idea has been in the works for each development team.
You know, I've actually made up this shit. Whoever even looked at about:config, saw that there is no such key. And even when you add it, it doesn't work.
/me losing some of my /. karma.)
The person who modded me informative... Has done something stupid. It only shows how stupid people are to not think for themselves... Tell them something that sounds remotely reasonable, something that they might agree with, and they'll believe, they'll follow.
Right. Into. A. Trap.
(I know I'm risking getting modded down to the hell. But who cares. Even only one awaken mind is worth
Then might I suggest trying Firefox 3. It's in RC1 now, and works like a charm! My only problem is that I prefer Adblock over Adblock Plus, and it doesn't work correctly (ie: imeem.com playlists won't load even if it's disabled)
Better yet, wait a month and download it with the rest of us.
My memory leaked and I forgot... :P
1. It's not open source
2. It wasn't free for a very long time, then they had a brief period where a free version was available with ads, then they took the ads away and made all versions (windows, linux, etc.) free.
3. No addon/extension system
Though I see #3 as the biggie.
The interesting part is that there is 25% of the market that IE does not have, and I would put the percentage of the market that knows which browser they are using at less than 25%. So obviously those who are "in the know", switch away from firefox, and get their relatives/friends to do so as well
I see 16 Cubans have pledged. I thought there was a restriction on encryption (SSL) to countries like Cuba. The page referenced has a paragraph title "Export Control Notice".
Umm... you're meant to mod things up if they're wrong, so as to encourage people to rebut them. If something's wrong, you don't censor it, you reply to it. That's why there are no downmods for wrong comments. (Although I think a +1, Wrong would be useful for such situations.)
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
New Guinness World Record: Mozilla proves that the world is flat; heading west from the Americas doesn't get you to Asia after all!
They should also offer options/scripts for package managers too (aptitude, up2date, yum etc). That'll help boost their download numbers.
I remember it took a while before v2 was available through apt-get (Ubuntu). This form of install is appealing to the lazy among us.
That is something I missed when I moved from Safari to Firefox on my Mac.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
Oy, I still use Winamp. Every now and then Winamp will throw a 'guru meditation error' which basically means delete and reinstall. It also renders incorrectly on Vista and eats a suspicious amount of CPU time. Every time I install it tries to add various links, set my home page, sign me up for free MP3s and install shell extensions and a systray app.
:)
I just wanted you to know what you're missing out on
I Auto Installed SP3 and now my computer is a useless brick!
Man, but "informative"? :P I bet that that mod didn't checked if what I've said was true. And I have intentionally introduced false information.
That's part of the reason, at least.
Clever signature text goes here.
> And something Opera invented first!
With the important difference that last I checked Opera just does a straight search, with no adaptive-learning-based ranking of results based on your past selections... That makes a big difference in usability.
> I wouldn't complain IF I COULD TURN IT OFF !!! Even if it's through about:config.
Let's see... you have the following options for turning off this behavior:
1) Include a '.' in your hostname. For example, type "foobar.com" instead of just "foobar"
2) Set the 'keyword.enabled' preference to false in about:config
If Opera has so many great features so far ahead of everyone else, why is its usage still somewhere around 1% on a good day?
People like you?Seriously, it was because the ad banner they had years ago.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
If Mozilla puts up a debian repository and promise to update it for each release I'll download it from their site. If not I'll wait for it to be moved into the ubuntu repository. Personally, I don't have enough time during the day to install updates manually.
As much as Firefox 2 sucked big time, Firefox 3 seems to be a very nice browser on their own, being faster than Opera in some tests.
It still lacks some CSS and almost all SVG support though.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
they have the balls to take all those eyeballs!
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
I can tell you why I stopped using it - I found out about Firefox's extensions. Opera didn't have anything like it at the time, and by the time they did it was too late. I was already happy with my browser and didn't see any need to switch back. And the extension (what are they calling them these days, add ons?) "community" seems to be thriving, so I still don't. I do use Opera occasionally, but basically that's when I'm doing development work and need to log in to an apps from different browsers at the same time. I still like it better than IE - hope that's not damning with faint praise.
I didn't really mean syntetic tests...all major browsers can comfortably handle, even when running on 5 year old computer (as I'm doing now), practically every webpage (minus those that, as I mentioned, still hold on to "works best in..." mentality).
There ARE huge differences when one pushes limits, for example, having 259 pages opened (as I'm doing now) in a browser that has been running for two weeks. No other browser than Opera is even CAPABLE of handling that gracefully (Seamonkey comes close) on this hardware. For me that tells how efficient/fast/well coded Opera is.
One that hath name thou can not otter
The person who modded me informative... Has done something stupid. It only shows how stupid people are to not think for themselves... Tell them something that sounds remotely reasonable, something that they might agree with, and they'll believe, they'll follow. Well, trusting is not stupid (as long the number of je^H^H people like you is small). This is like writing an online review claiming that a crappy book was fantastic just to teach other people to think for themselves. Progress is much easier when people are honest.
Sure, no one would be stupid enough to design a life support system based on your Slashdot post, but I think its quite alright for a moderator to assume that a person is not intentionally lying when he mods.
The now-defunct browser called Netcaptor was the first to implement tabbed browsing. It was originally released by Adam Stiles in 1998, and was a shell for IE's Trident rendering engine. I still use it as an IE replacement for IE-only sites, and you can get the last version from the Netcaptor site
I don't hate Firefox 3, I hate "awesome" bar. Everything else I've been fine with. I quite enjoy the memory fixes and the improvements to JavaScript support. I even like the database backend for bookmarks.
I just don't like that what should be an extension is being forced on me. For me, the whole benefit to Firefox was that it was an extremely lightweight foundation with excellent support for expansion by the community -- I could have it as light or as heavy as I wanted. Now I'm getting all these extra things that I don't particularly need. Having them available is great, but have them available as an extension so I don't have to spend my cycles on them.
You can't just magically get files with your average BitTorrent client - you must first download a .torrent file which describes some basic information about the download and lists available trackers. Couldn't companies just track how many times the .torrent files is downloaded? Further, if they are running the tracker themselves, wouldn't they also be able to get a pretty good idea of how many people are downloading the file by, I dunno, _tracking_ connected peers?
I don't know how much merit your "can't determine ratings" argument has upon serious review.
I pay real attention to comments, mods, and the rest.
But the Mod system is meant to filter out clear trolls so that the basic discussion can go on. On complex topics, even in serious discussions 10 posters end up being wrong because they missed a detail. Then they all learned something when poster #11 solves it once and for all.
The basic heuristic for upmodding is "if it looks like information, give it a chance". Across the range of stories, modders can't be experts all the time, but they want to reward quality posts.
If he's submarining, I cannot always know if one of his viciously clever posts with some piece of code does not butcher the situation.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Fortunately, at least as far as the general public is concerned (i.e. not the sort of people that have even heard of Slashdot), _no one_ really cares what Linux users do, much less how many of them do it.
Well, I suppose there is an exception to this - sometimes Linux users get lumped in with other "alternative" choices, such as terrorists and gays. Why would someone choose to do something nonconformist if they weren't looking to subvert our nations principles, right?
(In case it isn't obvious, this post is seething with anger towards people who actually think this way. Which unfortunately includes most voters.)
I think in this environment we need both "flagship" marketed versions, and a couple of "principled" versions.
The sneaky art of marketing does include factors aimed at popularity which often means features that annoy expert users. However, projects with too small of a userbase eventually wither into perma-stasis and cease to make a difference in the broad picture.
I recall hearing a couple stories about the Debian project struggling with some administrative issues because there was "no rush".
Some kind of IceCat variant or such would satisfy the specialist users who could go on to do things like trash Awesome Bar if they wanted to in one version.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"standards compliant DNS lookup error"?
Please point me to the standard in which said compliant DNS lookup error displaying behaviour is specified.
(No such thing exists, and displaying an error message would not be any more "standards compliant" than the ask-google behaviour.)
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.