Firefox 3.5.1 Released

alek writes "A day after Slashdot reports about a self-inflicted vulnerability in Firefox 3.5, Mozilla releases 3.5.1. It addresses that security issue, but also fixes the annoying slow-startup on Windows. Bummer the UNIX wars have subsided, because apparently they also had to fix a problem where Firefox on a Sparc platform would crash when visiting www.hp.com!"

Comments

I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[Anonymous Coward]

But I need build instructions and test instructions and possibly a youtube video, written/made for a student, not for a programmer that already knows a number of things about firefox. That is the way I feel about most open-source projects. I don't want to contribute in huge quantities, but only bugfixes, in any area and not limited to any particular technology. Sadly, I see such build-instructions missing or the build-instructions are too complicated in major open-source projects that could use bug-fixers early in the cycle.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[koreaman]

You should try fixing some bugs in Sunbird, if Mozilla interests you but the hugeness of Firefox is intimidating. I was able to contribute code (granted, only two lines) to Sunbird that fixed a real live bug, and I was in high school at the time.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Here, let me click on the top link for "firefox build instructions" in google: simple firefox build. Looks pretty standard to me. Tests, if there are any, are usually automated or findable by a similar exercise.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[Runaway1956]

If you need build instructions, and you don't know how to search for them, then you shouldn't be building anything, stupid. Just download the binary and RUN IT. If you can't do that, then your Mama is probably gonna spank you for messing with her computer anyway. Walk away from the machine NOW, before you are caught.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[clarkkent09]

Reiser is that you? I didn't know they let you have internet access now.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[RiotingPacifist]

litmus
mozilla qa
Both seams simple but time consuming but i don't think they need to be done in one sitting (unless you are on the nighties), unfortunately Linux x86_64 only has nighties.

p.s does anybody know a good way to update firefox (mozilla builds) as launching it as root isn't great and the idea of installing a webbrowser somewhere it can update itself is retarded.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[koreaman]

Er... what's so bad about installing it to /home/yourusernamehere/bin?

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's cute, but missing the point.

The majority of us use Windows, and will therefore probably want to develop on that platform.

If you read the Windows section of the page you linked to, the very first line is "Building on 64-bit Windows does not seem to be supported."

If you read the rest, you get told about using Visual Studio Express Editions and Windows SDKs, but as anyone who's tried it will know, just finding and installing the right SDKs there can be tricky. (Microsoft's own web site had links to an out-of-date version for a while, which didn't help.)

Then you get to the MozillaBuild bit. What, yet another proprietary build system? At that point, I really start to shudder, because even if an experienced Windows developer might already have Visual Studio, .Net and the Windows SDKs installed, they won't have this. Using Mercurial isn't so bad (at least it's not Git) but it's still going to be different to what most Windows developers are familiar with.

Then there are the fiddly bits of actually building it, to do with the Windows user home directory stuff that approximately no-one actually uses.

Seriously, if you think this is a "simple" build procedure that's going to get casual volunteers contributing small fixes, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. A simple build consists of "get_source_code <directory>" followed by changing to that directory and "make". If yours is more complicated, it's a roadblock to casual contribution, by which I mean contribution by those who don't make a full-time hobby of working on the project but would be happy to help fix the odd bug or implementing a minor feature they really want.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[RiotingPacifist]

If there is a browser/extention (they run at browser level)/plugin(yes even a flash or adobe exploit) or other program vulnerability they can perminantly modify your firefox binary to execute whatever code they want. In addition to having your user account, where all your data is, completely owned, no OS has a particularly good record on preventing malicious binaries from getting root (ubuntu with sudo is particularly bad as it can just request permisions just after you grant another process root using sudo) (and unless you've gone out of your way all your protection (apparmor in particular) is next to useless against a 3rd party binary).And I wouldn't dream of putting plugins in ~ either, even if it means it takes a few minutes they belong in /usr/share/mozilla/plugins/ (or /usr/lib64/m... for some reason on this fedora)

So in summary, as i have no clue about security, i make sure my 3rd party binaries are safely locked away in /opt and can only be updated by root.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[turgid]

The majority of us use Windows, and will therefore probably want to develop on that platform.

Right...

Seriously, if you think this is a "simple" build procedure that's going to get casual volunteers contributing small fixes, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

All that proprietary closed-source software required to build Open Source software (any software, really). Difficult to obtain, difficult to install and difficult to configure.

It sounds like Windows is the problem. All of those development tools are standard on Linux (your distro comes with them) and they're all configured ready to use "out of the box" when you install them (if they're not installed by default).

You will find that unix-like OSes are far more user-friendly as development environments. It's no accident that GNU chose unix to embrace and extend. That's why all of this open source stuff is for Linux first and foremost.

As more of you come to find this out first-hand, more of you will switch away from Windows to a Linux, Mac OS X or *BSD.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It sounds like Windows is the problem.

Bull. I've been developing software on Windows for years, and the build process required for any project I've set up consists of running one script.

The recurring problem I've encountered is all these "open" projects that have a convenient build process on exactly one platform and require jumping through crazy hoops to build anything else. (For the record, those requiring Cygwin to do anything on Windows are the most tragic cases of this disease.) Volunteers aren't as likely to help such a project as one where making a contribution is easier technically, any more than they are unlikely to support a project where the clique of core developers do not invite and welcome contributions.

You will find that unix-like OSes are far more user-friendly as development environments. [...] As more of you come to find this out first-hand, more of you will switch away from Windows to a Linux, Mac OS X or *BSD.

Some might find your assumption that those of us who choose to use Windows do so only out of ignorance to be insulting. I find it naive, amusing, and symptomatic of the same problem I mentioned above.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[427_ci_505]

Presumably you'd need to at least be capable of building software before the maintainers would trust your bugfixed code...

For example, the linux kernel is a lot easier to compile than contribute to.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[turgid]

So you Windows guys need to get together and submit some patches to make building things easier on Windows. The primary development environments for most FOSS projects are on FOSS platforms, not Windows.

You can't complain when you are given something for free.

Re:I'd fix bugs and contribute quality code

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You can't complain when you are given something for free.

We seem to have drifted off-track a bit. I'm not complaining about something I'm given for free. I'm just explaining why many volunteers find it difficult to contribute in the manner you suggest.

The primary development environments for most FOSS projects are on FOSS platforms, not Windows.

And I imagine that will remain the case as long as the people who set up the projects only value having a good process on the FOSS platforms, which is regrettable given the number of keen folks running on other platforms who might be willing and able to offer help if there wasn't such a high wall to climb first.

Re:FROSTY PISS

[theheadlessrabbit]

I have yet to see a single blue screen on Linux.

FOSS isn't perfect, it's just a whole lot better than one of the competitors.

and I enjoy my FOSS haven very much, thank you.

slow start for _some_

[asa]

Your post says "but also fixes the annoying slow-startup on Windows." which suggests that all Windows users were experiencing slow starts. That's not the case at all. It was only a small fraction of users affected by the now fixed issue. And for the record, the security flaw was already fixed, even before it was lifted from our bug database and turned into a public exploit. It just takes a few days to get everything in order for a release to users.

Re:slow start for _some_

[BadAnalogyGuy]

slow start for _some_. Miniature Type-R stickers for others.

Re:slow start for _some_

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

Was it OS dependent, or hardware dependent?

I had the issue in winxp 32bit sp3.

Re:slow start for _some_

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they added some compatibility code as I've been to several sites since downloading 3.5 that have had issues with forms. Including papajohns.com and outlook webmail installations amongst others.

Re:slow start for _some_

[0ld_d0g]

Irrelevant. I bet when you patched the vulnerability, it might have also affected 'some' people. Its enough that the potential was there.

Re:slow start for _some_

[cyber-vandal]

Firefox has a healthy eating mode?

Re:slow start for _some_

[Toonol]

From the link, it appears that files (probably having an excessive amount of files) in the IE cache was slowing down Firefox cache? Isn't the Firefox cache entirely separate? Does it look in the IE cache to try to be friendly and helpful, and if so, can that behavior be turned off?

Re:slow start for _some_

[Anonymous Coward]

And what should he have written instead of "It addresses that security issue"? "It contains the security fix that already existed but wasn't until now ready for a release to users"? Ugh.

Re:slow start for _some_

[cratermoon]

No less a personage than Brendan Eich says the whole issue with slow startup in the NSS module is snake oil that does nothing but "waste users' time at startup pretending to scrape entropy off the filesystem."

Re:slow start for _some_

[BikeHelmet]

Was it OS dependent, or hardware dependent?

I had the issue in winxp 32bit sp3.

Beats me - but I don't have it on that OS. It still takes 2 seconds to start.

Re:slow start for _some_

[ahecht]

NSS (Network Security Services) 3.12.3 is using IE temporary internet files to generate seeds. Sounds thoroughly stupid to me, as it means that if you never use Internet Explorer, your cryptographic seeds won't change. How about using the process list or something not Hard Drive dependent to generate the seeds instead?

Re:slow start for _some_

[TheSeer2]

It was user situation dependent. Firefox was reading all of a user's temp files to seed its RNG or something along those lines so if you had a lot of large temp files your startup time would be quite large.

Regardless, it still takes 5x Chrome's startup time with the fix so... peh.

Re:slow start for _some_

[ahecht]

On further study, it NSS DOES use process IDs and many, many other factors to generate the seeds. Searching the additional file locations ("C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\History", "C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files", "C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\My Recent Documents", "C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Temp\", "Recycle Bin", and "Network Neighborhood") were added because some older OSs (Win2k and WinCE) didn't have strong enough build-in pseudo-random number generators.

This patch changed NSS to use the built-in PRNG in Windows XP and up which uses "process ID and thread ID, the system clock, the system time, the system counter, memory status, free disk clusters, andthe hashed user environment block".

Re:slow start for _some_

[klui]

OS dependent. They coded for the case where Windows CE/2000 did not have a certain call and they wanted to get good entropy for their RNG in NSS. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605

Re:slow start for _some_

[bunratty]

I have never understood why people make such a big deal over Firefox startup times. It's a few seconds. On my two-year-old laptop, Firefox 3.5.1 starts in two seconds. Granted, Chrome starts in less than one second, but in absolute difference it's about a second.

Re:slow start for _some_

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always had a sluggish start up. At least, any release for the past few years.

Second I log into my machine, I open up Firefox, putty, and whatever else, let's say Visual Studio.

I can have a project loaded and be ssh'd into my server before the damn thing even starts up. Ridiculous.

Happens on every machine I use, which suggests that it's "something I'm doing wrong" or "add-ons" or whatever other excuse people seem to give other than "there's actually something wrong with this thing", but I assure you it's Firefox.

Re:slow start for _some_

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem wasn't that Firefox took a few seconds. The problem that it was taking minutes to start up.

Re:slow start for _some_

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus.... 2 seconds, 1 second, 5 minutes who cares. As long as it eventually starts and I can get my porn. I'm cool.

Wow... what a non-issue. (start time I mean. not getting my porn - now that would mean heads would have to roll (pun intended).

Re:slow start for _some_

[silent_artichoke]

9 addons and it only took mine 16 seconds from clicking the icon to home page (Google) after a fresh boot. Maybe it's because you are doing it the second you log on. Windows is barely even booted at that point. You still have a good 5-10 minutes before everything is fully functional.

Re:slow start for _some_

[klui]

Several seconds is not a problem; I never ran into this because my temp directories and stuff are cleaned up often and the issue seems to occur only after a cold boot (I may be mistaken about this latter part). So my startup times are 5 secs or so since I hardly turn off my machine.

But others were waiting for minutes, 1-4 minutes for some. Pretty annoying if I were hit with those times. I think these individuals had hundreds of MB for their IE cache and their temp folders were large as well.

Re:slow start for _some_

[bunratty]

I was responding to "it still takes 5x Chrome's startup time with the fix."

Re:slow start for _some_

[ion.simon.c]

I can have a project loaded and be ssh'd into my server before the damn thing even starts up. Ridiculous.

You must have tiny-ass projects. Or maybe you're using VS 6.0. My anectotal experience does not match yours.

Me too

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I also find that not only are build process instructions strangely lacking, but also that there are big holes in instructions on how to debug source code. Likewise, I sometimes get a stack dump, but there aren't any instructions on what to do with that kind of info. I just ignore it.

Re:FROSTY PISS

[basementman]

So what your saying is Microsoft could fix all of their problems by changing the color of the screen?

Good.

[xlotlu]

Now I can re-enable TraceMonkey and slashdot will be fast again... sorta.

Re:Good.

[Inda]

It is fast if you use the old layout, block 3rd party images, and Flash. Still looks like a site created in MS Word though. Good job it's not why I come here (still waiting for the meeting-girls-thing I was promised btw).

Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Faryshta]

FF 3.5 Hasn't yet been compiled for any of the versions of Ubuntu yet http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=FIREFOX

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Eighty7]

https://launchpad.net/~fta/+archive/ppa

Just add the fta repository & install "firefox-3.5". They even link to a mozilla daily build repository if that's your thing.

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Tubal-Cain]

Ahem

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Haiyadragon]

Scroll down to firefox-3.5. Stupidly, this package doesn't overwrite the firefox package, meaning that applications will still use 3.0 to open links. Even if you remove the firefox package, firefox-3.5 is still not used. Changing the webbrowser in preferred applications seems to work on some applications...

Anyway, in the end I just simlinked like so: ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 /usr/bin/firefox, and everything worked great.

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Runaway1956]

So - who got brave, and installed FF 3.6? Am I that brave, or am I not? Hmmmm........

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu uses update-alternatives to select between different packages providing the same functionality

to see which browsers are installed:

update-alternatives --list x-www-browser

to select firefox-3.5:

update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /usr/bin/firefox-3.5

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Scroll down to firefox-3.5. Stupidly, this package doesn't overwrite the firefox package, meaning that applications will still use 3.0 to open links. Even if you remove the firefox package, firefox-3.5 is still not used.

In Jaunty, this is because Firefox 3.0 remains the default version of Firefox (and the firefox package always points towards the default version of Firefox for that release). In Karmic, this is because the developers haven't switched the default from 3.0 to 3.5 yet, though they will soon.

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[tbi]

Although you've already found a solution, for anybody else having this problem, there is an arguably easier way to upgrade Firefox on Ubuntu short of using the 'Shiretoko' branded version. Just download the 'Ubuntuzilla.py' script ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/ ) and then at the command line run 'ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox' and follow any prompts.

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Threni]

I use Ubuntu, but until it's upgradable via the standard mechanism I'm not interested. I'm suprised it's not available yet, to be honest. What's the hold up?

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[PitaBred]

I'm running it now. Works pretty ok... every now and then something flakes out (like, once every month at most) and I use it as my primary/only browser.

Re:Someone tell it to Canonical.

[Tubal-Cain]

Well, I don't think Jaunty will ever have it except possibly through backports because Ubuntu freezes major version numbers for each release. Why the firefox package doesn't point to 3.5 in karmic, I don't know.

Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Very funny. When I forget to turn off compositing before full-screening the movie player, the system reliably locks up. No Ctrl+Alt+F1, no utterly boring elephant raising, no numlock toggle, and most importantly, because it makes you right: no blue screen. It's just black.

Re:Blue screen

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Actually, the linux blue screen of death is blinking of 2 (or is it three?) of the keyboard leds. Though support for blue screen of death is coming, by the name of kernel mode-settting. It is pretty rare, though.

Lockups I have seen, too, in both linux and windows. Lots of cases is hardware problems, but your problem sounds like a driver issue. Using proprietary drivers, perhaps?

Re:Blue screen

[Zancarius]

Lockups I have seen, too, in both linux and windows. Lots of cases is hardware problems, but your problem sounds like a driver issue. Using proprietary drivers, perhaps?

This is true. I've had my share of complete freezes under Linux. Ironically though, SSH access to the box still typically works and I can kill X if ctrl+alt+backspace doesn't work. It's rare to have a freeze that completely evicts all sense of response from the system (though I've had this happen before).

Interestingly, the last unusual behavior I had under Linux was when a video card blew 4 out of 7 or 8 capacitors. That was a real treat.

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Using proprietary drivers, perhaps?

Yes, indeed I do. I wasn't trying to be bashing/trolling here, just pointing out the sub-optimal end-user experience. My ATI card (RV710 [Radeon HD 4350]) is by no means rare and I can't afford to buy another, more "compatible", one.

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hardly call it a complete freeze if "only" X is frozen. Still pretty annoying but as you say you can usually recover by killing and restarting X.

Re:Blue screen

[msuarezalvarez]

Ironically though, SSH access to the box still typically works...

That is not ironic: it is good design...

Re:Blue screen

[sortius_nod]

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. SSH usually runs fine, or using CTRL+ALT+Backspace... if X crashes you won't be able to CTRL+ALT+FX I'm pretty sure.

I've only ever had Linux hard lock when I've been testing out early alpha stuff on a sandbox (used to be an old machine, now it's just a VM).

If you can't bring it back and you're not doing something stupid then it's probably hardware, so you might want to run some diags.

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't bring it back and you're not doing something stupid then it's probably hardware

As I said in the "Blue screen" post, I can't even use the "Magic SysRq key". I've invested several days in solving this. I'm definitely not doing something stupid. It definitely isn't the hardware. It's a problem between ATI's drivers and the rest of the OS.

Re:Blue screen

[TheLink]

> Still pretty annoying but as you say you can usually recover by killing and restarting X.

a) If you are a "Desktop Linux" user running actual Desktop applications, that means you lose most of your unsaved work (if there is a way to not lose the unsaved work, please let me know).
b) If you use X as just a way to run screen/vi/emacs and browsers, then you are less affected.

Basically if I let my mom/uncle/aunt use "Desktop Linux" and X locks up, it's effectively as bad as a BSOD for them.

Saying X freezing is not a problem since you can usually recover by killing and restarting it is like saying that Windows 95 is stable as long as you regularly shutdown/exit to dos and type win to restart it[1].

[1] you could actually do that in the old days of Win 95 :).

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

"Agnosticism is the absence of decisiveness."

No, I've simply decided to not participate in your little game of false choices.

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm? It seems that X completely locked up with no way to reset it. The fact that other processes such as sshd are unaffected is of small consolation if you don't have another terminal to access them. A better design would be to allow the user some way to kill/restart X on the same machine (most people only have one machine.) The fact that if X goes down, it also eats all user input (except the power/reset button) seems not such a good design to me...

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what they're saying is that Linux freezing up is not a problem because they don't mind when Linux freezes up, only when Windows does.

Re:Blue screen

[Nimey]

If your app is written sensibly, it will either autosave periodically or will write what it's got open to disk if you "kill -term" its PID.

The latter's no help for naive users, of course.

Re:Blue screen

[drinkypoo]

That's not a "complete freeze". When the machine literally hangs (infinite loop in a driver or something) or shuts off spontaneously or kernel panics and halts, that's a complete freeze. I assure you that ssh is not functioning in this situation. I've certainly had both happen to me. I hear that a lot of the "beachballs" on the Mac these days are similar, and if you have the ssh daemon running and another machine to log in with, you can at least restart safely if not kill the offending program. OTOH I've had beachballs where ssh wasn't working, too.

Re:Blue screen

[TheLink]

I suspect kmail/kontakt does autosave periodically, but apparently it's broken in some way: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-bugs-dist&m=122605713921371&w=2

Anyway the last I used it, when I try to save an email draft while working on it, it closes the draft. The KDE people seem to think that just because I want to save my work it means that I want to close it too.

Then there's Openoffice:

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10604&hilit=autosave

It should probably be fixed by now, but what it shows to me is how seriously they value their users work - not seriously enough.

As it is, I'm going to have to assume that most apps are NOT written sensibly.

FWIW, so far my windows, Linux and *BSD machines have not crashed on me for months :). But back when I was using Opensuse 10.x, it did lock up on me a few times, maybe it was an interaction with vmware GSX (which I was running on it).

Re:Blue screen

[maestroX]

If you are a "Desktop Linux" user running actual Desktop applications, that means you lose most of your unsaved work (if there is a way to not lose the unsaved work, please let me know).

man tee

Re:Blue screen

[ILongForDarkness]

I just had one yesterday. It was repeatable with the same hardware. I Added another harddrive to a system. Ran gparted, put a label on it (mac label as it is eventually going to be used as an external drive for a mac system), then try to mount the drive: says bad label. Okay maybe the kernel can't mount it but gparted should see it because it made the label right? So I open gparted again and ... the system hangs. I was able to repeat it and noticed that once I put the mac label on the disk gparted wouldn't let me delete it (had to format it with a different system and put it back in). I ended up putting a msdos label then mounting it and everything was happy. All I wanted to do was make the drive internal so a "dd" wipe would run faster ... alas. Now I have a system and only 90 more drives to go :)

Re:Blue screen

[vandit2k6]

I very much agree. Your X is froze and user doesn't know how to restart. Another user (his friend perhaps) can ssh into the box and fix it for him (by way of restarting X for him or shutting down the system). I agree that this is a really good design.

Re:Blue screen

[Zancarius]

That is not ironic: it is good design...

It's ironic in the sense that while you may have lost all of your work, you still have access to the machine to (hopefully) correct the problem that caused it.

Re:Blue screen

[Zancarius]

That's not a "complete freeze". When the machine literally hangs (infinite loop in a driver or something) or shuts off spontaneously or kernel panics and halts, that's a complete freeze.

This is ridiculous. If we're going to split hairs over semantics, then I would suggest that the OP should have stated that he was suffering from kernel panics. You'll notice that I didn't specify what "completely froze." Had I the foresight to consider that a number of posters would be complaining about my choice of words, I would have specified a "complete freeze of X."

OTOH I've had beachballs where ssh wasn't working, too.

To be honest, I've very seldom had kernel panics that weren't the result of my omission of something important, like building a controller module into the kernel. I think the last panic I suffered as a result of some driver weirdness was probably in 2000-2001. My current Gentoo install has only suffered a "complete freeze" as a result of borked NVIDIA drivers.

But yes, complaining about semantics aside, I agree. My choice of words could have been better.

Re:Blue screen

[Zancarius]

a) If you are a "Desktop Linux" user running actual Desktop applications, that means you lose most of your unsaved work (if there is a way to not lose the unsaved work, please let me know).
b) If you use X as just a way to run screen/vi/emacs and browsers, then you are less affected.

Basically if I let my mom/uncle/aunt use "Desktop Linux" and X locks up, it's effectively as bad as a BSOD for them.

Thank you for point this out. That was more or less what I was hoping readers would have garnered from my statements, but evidently they're too busy focusing on slightly incorrect (I'll admit it it!) semantics in my choice of words. Never mind, as you said, the end result is identical for end users who haven't a clue how X works.

I deeply appreciate that you have the insight to have caught this and clarified in terms I could not. Thank you.

Re:Blue screen

[geekboy642]

tee? Really? What the hell sort of DESKTOP APPLICATIONS produce all of their output on the terminal? OpenOffice? GIMP? KMail? GVim?

No, the only solution is the Jesus rule. Save your files. Save them early, save them often. Not just because the system is going to crash, but because you never know when the power will fail, lightning will strike, or a cow-orker will trip over your power cord.

Re:Blue screen

[Shamenaught]

Then-again, sometimes office crashes when saving a document. If it's not saved right, office won't open it, but open office can recover some of the information.

Re:Blue screen

[Shamenaught]

Really? If you write the file whilst the power goes down then you've just written a corrupted file and lost everything. If your autosave gets corrupted, at-least you still have the original. Personally, I'd suggest a balance, preferably on a machine running ZFS.

Re:Blue screen

[Shamenaught]

Definitely good to stay modular, and it's a good way for businesses to run as there should probably be a 'friend' (read tech support) around (possibly even in another country) with SSH access.

All OO.org needs is some external, low-level, interface allowing the support to prompt a save. If a save's not possible, then perhaps a memory dump of the application from which the document might be recovered.

Re:Blue screen

[Anonymous Coward]

a) If you are a "Desktop Linux" user running actual Desktop applications, that means you lose most of your unsaved work (if there is a way to not lose the unsaved work, please let me know).

Xmove or xpra will probably do what you want.

Xmove sets up a pseudo X server that the app connects to the redirects it to whatever X sever you want it to display on, I tried it a while back and remember it didn't work quite as well as using the on X directly, I can't remember what exactly was wrong, but I think it was just that the pseudo X server was limited in the features it supported, which may be a result of it not being developed for a long time.

I haven't tried Xpra, but it describes itself as "screen for X", and since it is new it may work somewhat better.

Re:Blue screen

[Ofloo]

Maybe it's the software for that hardware that isn't compatible, .. if it works on one platform why wouldn't it work on an other.

Re:Someone tell Canonical.

[xaxa]

I installed it ages ago:

aptitude install firefox-3.5

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=names&keywords=firefox-3.5

Re:FROSTY PISS

[Opportunist]

Make it black and hope people just think they accidently turned their computer off.

HP.com

[Tubal-Cain]

they also had to fix a problem where Firefox on a Sparc platform would crash when visiting www.hp.com!"

Anyone that sees a downside to not accessing hp.com must not use NoScript.

Re:HP.com

[drinkypoo]

I have an HP laptop, and I need to visit HP for drivers and such. Luckily, HP's website mostly works without JS most of the time. Some features, however, absolutely require it (like live chat.) Getting HP support through chat is marginally less frustrating than having to do it on the phone in most cases.

Anger problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anger problem.

Google Gears disabled again?!

[sakis]

Kind of offtopic, but by upgrading to FF 3.5.1, Google Gears is again disabled. Why did Google allowed it to be compatible with only 3.5.0?!

Re:Google Gears disabled again?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the conspiracy theory angle is that they're deliberately doing a shitty job with Gears on Firefox so that more people will use Chrome. But it's probably more likely that their people working on Firefox simply don't know what the hell they're doing. If they can't manage to make their extension compatible with subsequent minor revisions, it sure as hell isn't Firefox's fault.

Re:Google Gears disabled again?!

[Threni]

Perhaps their time machine isn't working and they couldn't check that future releases worked, and decided it was safer to only support version of Firefox they're sure about. You can always wait, if it's important for you, or upgrade then downgrade again if you didn't want to check first and have to have it working for you. It's better than the alternative - Google allowing what is essentially an untested upgrade.

Re:Google Gears disabled again?!

[Will Work For Joules]

I don't know, but at this rate, Google Gears is completely useless for me. I've just begun to use a local mail and calendar client (which I guess is better practice anyway).

Re:Google Gears disabled again?!

[flydpnkrtn]

You can unzip the xpi and edit the actual "version identifier" to bump it to 3.5.1 if you're impatient :)

Nice article on how to do this here

Re:Google Gears disabled again?!

[BZ]

Becuase Gears uses low-level binary hooks (e.g. completely replacing the Firefox HTTP cache with its own) and presumably doesn't want to worry about your browser crashing due to a code change on the Firefox end?

Holy negatives Batman!

[XanC]

"Now correct me if I'm incorrect, but was I told it's untrue that people in Springfield have no faith? Was I not misinformed?"

5 times 0 is still 0

[RudeIota]

Regardless, it still takes 5x Chrome's startup time with the fix so... peh.

It's true. ;-)

Re:FROSTY PISS

[amiga3D]

I'm surprised you would be running linux since it doesn't run any software or games you use and crashes all the time with you. I'll admit if I was a games junky I wouldn't use linux....I'd use a playstation. I'm sure you love windoze and all it's yummy malware goodness but I think you're a blatant liar about how many crashes you've seen on linux. I haven't seen a single system lockup since the 2.6 kernel and I doubt a windoze fanboy that can't find any decent linux software runs linux often enough to see "plent" of linux crashes. I call bullshit.

And from Unix wars...

[Fotograf]

will obviously rise the new Desktop OS, the Unix peace will mark year of BSD on desktop!!

Re:And from Unix wars...

[jellomizer]

Isn't that OS X?

BSD isn't dead heck it has overtaken Linux by strides and is a serious contender to windows. Just just downplay the BSD roots of the OS.

Great...

[VulpesFoxnik]

Great. Iceweasel 3.5 just entered Debian Experimental... I'll likely have to continue to run with jit off for another month.

[/ half joking ]

problem?

[shacky003]

"...fix a problem where Firefox on a Sparc platform would crash when visiting www.hp.com!" Much like the memory leak to nowhere, It wasn't a problem - it was a feature!

version numbers

[mdew]

Going by previous versions of firefox, shouldn't it be 3.5.0.1 rather than 3.5.1?

Re:version numbers

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Going by previous versions of firefox, shouldn't it be 3.5.0.1 rather than 3.5.1?

Mozilla decided to simplify that with Firefox 3 (note that the upcoming security release for Firefox 3 is 3.0.12, not 3.0.0.12). Exactly why they used four numbers in the first place is something I don't know, it seems it started with Firefox 1.5. I know that one advantage touted of XPCOM was the ability to easily make incremental updates, so maybe there was a plan for a Firefox 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 (with the final number for each being used for security updates). Of course that would've been complicated and silly, so it seems the plan was abandoned and the version number compacted.

Yet more links to IE

[dugeen]

First Firefox starts depending on the IE security settings, now this - has it started using the IE temporary internet files as well? I'm starting to wonder if Mozilla are being paid by MS to promote their line that IE and the OS's networking model are one and the same thing.

Re:Yet more links to IE

[Krupuk]

The thing with the IE security settings really bugs me. I have to use Opera to download at certain sites, because IE and FF won't allow it, whatever I set the settings to. To be completely independant of IE is one of the main reasons I use FF, why change that?

Re:Yet more links to IE

[thejynxed]

If you think that is bad enough, just use Process Explorer and click on Firefox.exe in the process list. You'll be extremely saddened by all the IE-specific nonsense that Firefox apparently is now reliant on.

Firefox even decides to load driver files (.dll files and others) for Windows services I specifically have disabled.

Firefox, do you honestly need to start winspool.drv, dnsapi.dll, rasadhlp.dll, rasapi32.dll, ieframe.dll, ieframe.dll.mui, etc? Really? Even with the associated services disabled? When the associated hardware is not installed (printer, 56k modem)?

Note: I've checked the process threads of Opera and other browsers, and they don't load half of the shit that Firefox.exe does.

We won't even go into why Firefox would load sound drivers. A second time. After the OS already has them loaded.

And people wonder why Firefox has memory leaks from hell.

Still, this is my browser of choice, because Opera is just horribly hideous to look at and doesn't work on half of the websites I visit. IE8 at least is a serious improvement over any previous version of IE. Chrome is just...let us just say I don't need Google recording every single link I click on and selling the information or providing me with targeted advertising 24/7. It's bad enough I use GMail (at least for unimportant things).

Re:Yet more links to IE

[fast turtle]

Thanks for mentioning all the Windows .dll's that firefox-3.5+ is now loading. Means I wont be installing it at all and will simply have to suffer from IE8 on Win7-RC.

As a Gentoo user, I'm even finding that the only time I use Firefox is to access Google and a couple of other sites that have flash games I play, otherwise it's Konqueror all the way for me since it's faster.

Re:FROSTY PISS

[SyscRAsH]

Fuck this open source shit! This just proves that your precious bullshit has vulnerabilities as well.
Slashdot is the haven for FOSS fags.

Jeez Bill, it's really easy to tell when you haven't had *your* coffee in the morning.

Re:FROSTY PISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it black and hope

Obama-mode

Oh yeah?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now fix the terrible bug with Flash that has suddenly shown its ugly head since FF3+ (2 was perfectly fine!)

I work with Flash files, sad thing, yes, but i do.
I actually use the context menu for Flash while using it.
The Flash menu takes AGES to open. Hell, it even slows down opening the context menu from the titlebar!

This shit will not do. I hate Flash as much as most people, and would rather see video/canvas take off.

Firefox 3.5.1 released

[Anonymous Coward]

so can anyone tell me why Firefox felt like it had to scan my hard drive in the first place? i had it set to delete history on exit. why then did it feel like it had to go looking in *other* programs' folders for history files?

Re:Firefox 3.5.1 released

[tepples]

why then did it feel like it had to go looking in *other* programs' folders for history files?

So that other programs can't guess the pseudorandom numbers that Firefox uses to set up SSL connections.

Ummm...

[jellomizer]

What Unix war? There is the normal bantering from people saying their version of Unix is better then the rest (Which for the most part is normally the version of Unix they know the best) but a Unix war. I haven't heard anything about it. Other then OS X all the other Unixes are in heavy competition against Linux and Windows for its survival.

Re:Ummm...

[H0p313ss]

What Unix war? There is the normal bantering from people saying their version of Unix is better then the rest (Which for the most part is normally the version of Unix they know the best) but a Unix war. I haven't heard anything about it. Other then OS X all the other Unixes are in heavy competition against Linux and Windows for its survival.

The first rule of the Unix war is nobody talks about the Unix war. The MIB are on their way, please stay calm.

gpg: Note: This key has expired!

[Anonymous Coward]

gpg --verify "Firefox Setup 3.5.1.exe.asc"
gpg: Signature made 07/15/09 19:56:19 using DSA key ID 17785FE8
gpg: Good signature from "Mozilla Software Releases <releases@mozilla.org>"
gpg: Note: This key has expired!
Primary key fingerprint: 8D6F 1BA4 A340 4DDB 3F2F  D080 7447 4499 8123 47DD
     Subkey fingerprint: 3338 E6BA FF10 3B3D A6A9  E424 B57B 5484 1778 5FE8

Re:FROSTY PISS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good solution! Instead of observing the blue screen with pure horror in their eyes, like a deer in the headlights, the users power cycle the machines since they really can't do anything about it at that time. It just need to have a way to log the bugcheck somehow for that administrative pleasure..

Flash context menu

[viralMeme]

"The Flash menu takes AGES to open. Hell, it even slows down opening the context menu from the titlebar!"

Do you have any URLs that demonstrate this slowdown?

In case you can't find it...

[wembley fraggle]

On the macintosh version at least, the 'check for updates' menu item is in the Help menu. Because that's clearly where it belongs. I only found it because I was just about to search the help for advice on where to find it.

Re:In case you can't find it...

[glavenoid]

that's probably why they put it *there* :-)

Re:FROSTY PISS

[Culture20]

I have yet to see a single blue screen on Linux.

I have. I've also seen the sad mac face, Apple ][ corruption, kernel panics, etc.

Joking aside, I've had the equivalent of a BSOD on Linux several times on different types of hardware. All but one case was bad hardware, one was a kernel bug (fixed upstream in two days).

Re:FROSTY PISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as easy as it is to tell when I've had your mom in the morning.

Bill

Re:FROSTY PISS

[Anonymous Coward]

I was raised by two men, you insensitive clod!

Green and red indicators of death

[tepples]

So what your saying is Microsoft could fix all of their problems by changing the color of the screen?

Microsoft tried that twice on the Xbox 360, and people continued to complain about the red ring of death (general hardware failure) and the green screen of death (E74 error).

Re:FROSTY PISS

[drinkypoo]

I'm an ex-Amigan non-fanboy who has seen plenty of crashes and Lockups on Linux. I am currently sitting at Windows Vista but I do have a Debian system running. It's a cute little DT Research DT168, a sub-ten-watt Geode LX system that shares out my MyBook (XFS-formatted and loving it) to the Xbox and other Windows systems in the house.

I tried to run Linux on this system, but there are two major problems. One, HP uses the microsoft tools to create things like ACPI configurations. These tools are deliberately constructed to create barely-compliant or even noncompliant configurations which are nonetheless understood by Windows. Two, nVidia continues to be incapable of putting out a driver for Linux which even approaches the quality of the Windows driver. I have an allegedly professional-level graphics card (Quadro 2700M) but numerous features do not work correctly under Linux, like HDMI out, or multi-monitor configurations (disconnect external display, can't use X until you bang on the X config. WTF?)

What I'd really like is to use something like Moblin, down the road. But so far Intel is doing their best to make sure I won't want to run it. Even on my lady's intel-all-the-way Dell laptop, the graphics support was glitchy and the wifi card was unsupported. Why would they focus on netbooks to the exclusion of related hardware? It's almost like they don't want me to see any value in buying intel.

Anyway, I have been using Linux since Kernel 1.1.47 and have seen more than my share of lockups and crashes. But just installing Linux on this laptop and trying to use it correctly will produce them. It's not really Linux's fault, but pretending that it "just works" for as many people as Windows does is just not reasonable. Once you get it working, it is much more stable in most cases, but getting it there is beyond many people's reach.

What about freezes on long pages w/many links?

[King_TJ]

I've been using the OS X version of Firefox 3.5 on a Mac Pro and I've experienced a problem where the browser freezes (spinning beach-ball icon) every time I log onto my EasyNews account and do a search or request a list of content in a newsgroup that has a large number of results.

Typically, it will quickly display the first page full of results, then freeze a second or two after that. If I wait long enough (several minutes or more) and come back to the browser, then sometimes I find it's no longer frozen and I can scroll on down to the bottom of the page. Other times, it seemed to be permanently frozen (but I honestly never tried waiting HOURS or anything to see if it ever un-froze).

I anxiously applied the 3.51 update, hoping it addressed this problem ... but nope. Exact same issue.

Oddly enough, my friend using a 24" iMac says he can't replicate my problem in Firefox at all, though we're both on the same version of OS X and both have EasyNews accounts.

I already tried the usual "Mac troubleshooting" ... running a "repair permissions" in Disk Utility, deleting all the "prefs" files related to Firefox, etc. No luck.

Re:What about freezes on long pages w/many links?

[BSDetector]

Wow - I thought this stuff "just works"!

Re:What about freezes on long pages w/many links?

[Zan Lynx]

I see that too on my Macbook Pro. I think it is an odd interaction between SQLite and those continuous backup programs that want to be like Time Machine. I'm using one (Memeo Lifeagent) that came with my Seagate external HD. If I put the backup software into "pause" mode Firefox gets a lot more responsive.

Re:What about freezes on long pages w/many links?

[RockMFR]

Sounds like bug 477564. Try the workaround in the first comment.

Other than OS X and Linux...

[argent]

Other then OS X all the other Unixes are in heavy competition against Linux and Windows for its survival.

Linux is UNIX too.

Still 7 to go

[CodeShark]

on the Acid3 test, lagging both Opera and Safari which have reached 100% on this fun benchmark. About 50% faster on avg when I "thumb in the air" tested it (ran 10X and wrote down the times, then averaged them than Firefox was as little as six months ago, so this release is definitely one to pick up in terms of browser security and performance, though.

Re:So fast!!

[Anonymous Coward]

EPIC FAIL

Does it finally have paste and go?

[Snaller]

I mean, I've given up on scaling fonts lager on the fly (as opposed to zoom), but how about 'paste and go' for urls - like opera has had for years (and now chrome)

Re:Does it finally have paste and go?

[Kev Vance]

Middle clicking in the document area will paste and go. That probably only works in X, but the same principle should apply on other interfaces.

Re:Does it finally have paste and go?

[TheSunborn]

What's wrong with the way it scale text? (You do know that the zoom menu have a "zoom text only" which sound exactly like what you want.

Re:FROSTY PISS

[vandit2k6]

Microsoft, Together We Can!

Mozilla.com still has 3.5, not 3.5.1...

[mengel]

So why does the main Mozilla.com page still list 3.5 and not 3.5.1?

Re:Someone tell Canonical.

[TheModelEskimo]

Don't forget to install the firefox gnome support package along with it, or you'll have a browser that doesn't play nice with other apps. I had this problem and I'm not sure why gnome support wasn't a dependency, seeing how I had gnome installed already...

Something's wrong here...

[stalky14]

3.5.1... really?! That's not Mozilla-style at all. It should be 3.5.0.0.0.0.0.2467!

Re:Someone tell Canonical.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's well and good if you're running Jaunty or Karmic. Those of use who are happy with the LTS release, get 3.0.11

Re:Someone tell Canonical.

[Anonymous Coward]

The gnome support package was automatically installed for me because I used a repo, however, there's also an addon called ubuntu firefox modifications that I have to keep off because it messes with compatibility with other addons. Don't know what it does though.

Running 3.6

[spage]

who got brave, and installed FF 3.6?

I've been running Firefox nightly builds for years. I recently switched from Windows to Kubuntu, found a 64-bit build (I think http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu), and got right back on the nightly rough edge, currently called Firefox 3.6a1pre and codenamed Namoroka.

It's definitely not for most people; you have to watch planet.mozilla.org to track what's going on, you give up on some extensions, and there are occasionally snafus where you have to look at the firefox builds forum on mozillazine to find out what's up and maybe revert to using an earlier browser for a day or so. But by and large nightly builds work. Mozilla's investment in build farms and try servers and test suites means most stuff that's checked in to the trunk is working.

Tip: use /path/to/old/firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager to simultaneously run a second instance using a blank profile to see if it's just the new version or your profile or a particular extension that's causing problems.

Re:FROSTY PISS

[xmvince]

yeah i like the Full Option Science System as well

Re:FROSTY PISS

[amiga3D]

stay anonymous.....coward

Re:FROSTY PISS

[amiga3D]

I can't say about your hardware there. But I've got 3 systems currently running linux. One fedora 11 one ubuntu 9.04 and another with xubuntu and not one of these has had a single system lockup. I've installed linux on many friends systems and none had problems with system crashes. Not all of them stuck with linux thanks to lack of support for software they wanted to run.....but none left because it was a buggy mess. Really the only problems I've had with linux in the last 3 years have been driver related....plenty of those however.