Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Available To Download; Mozilla To Offer 0-Day Firefox Releases Via Snaps

Reader prisoninmate writes: The latest, and hopefully, the greatest version of Ubuntu is now available to download. On the sidelines, Mozilla today announced the availability of future releases of its popular Firefox web browser in the snap package format for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Earlier today, Canonical unleashed the final release of the highly anticipated Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, bringing users a great set of new features and improvements. Also today, it looks like Canonical has renewed its partnership with Mozilla to offer Firefox as the default web browser on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and upcoming releases of the Linux kernel-based operating systems. As part of the new partnership, Mozilla is committed to distributing future versions of Firefox as a snap package. Having Firefox distributed in the snap format means that you'll have 0-day releases in Ubuntu 16.04. Yes, just like Windows and Mac OS X, users are enjoying their 0-day releases of Mozilla Firefox and don't have to wait for package maintainers of a particular GNU/Linux distribution to update the software in the main repositories. For Mozilla, having Firefox as a snap package means that they'll be able to continually optimize it for Ubuntu.

Comments

.deb repositories

[dmbasso]

Yes, just like Windows and Mac OS X, users are enjoying their 0-day releases of Mozilla Firefox and don't have to wait for package maintainers of a particular GNU/Linux distribution to update the software in the main repositories.

Really? I mean, are you guys so fucking retarded that you're not able to setup your own .deb repositories? Fuck, you can even use Launchpad's PPAs!

Re:.deb repositories

[TangoMargarine]

Adding an extra repo to your package manager once and getting the update the same day ever after...vs. manually going to their website and downloading it each time.

Hmm.

Re:.deb repositories

[squiggleslash]

Chrome comes as a .deb (so it opens by default in a nice GUI tool that installs it with one click) that adds and enables its own repo, so there's always that.

Of course, Chrome's version is also broken (it doesn't bother to specify architecture, which means everyone using a combination 32 bit + 64 bit Ubuntu has lately started to get errors whenever they apt-get update because Chrome isn't available for ix86-32 any more. But that's another issue.)

Re:.deb repositories

[SumDog]

It's a regression, and a bad one. You can push 0-day updates via the standard ubuntu/debian package repository. Firefox doesn't even really have that many dependencies (it has an amazing amount of shit compiled into it. libjpeg, libpng, gzip..it links to the system libraries for almost nothing). This is for stability, but it also increases the risk of security holes quite a bit. A researcher at RMIT did a talk at Ruxcon one real about tools he wrote to scan manjor software projects to find vulnerable versions of embedded libraries.

In any case, snappy are a regression. Linux package management was always way superior to Android/Apple monolithic self contained apps. Linux now has svchost (systemd) and monolithic packages (snappy). How else can we fuck it up even more?

Re:.deb repositories

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach. Sane, secure, centralized package management is a really big reason to use Linux. Snaps seems to ignore this important philosophy. I understand that Ubuntu must keep this long languishing dream of convergence going and that Snaps are there most recent flounder towards that...but come on now.

Re:.deb repositories

[Gavagai80]

I believe snappy packages are self-updating.

Re:.deb repositories

[thegarbz]

Linux package management was always way superior to Android/Apple monolithic self contained apps

In every way except for everyone being able to push their latest software whenever they want. I'm as much of a fan of apt-get install x to just have something magic its way on my computer as the next person. Linux package management is frigging amazing, but it's not a panacea for everything. In fact I was keen to get this Ubuntu update just so I can move to a newer version of the very outdated samba server that was in the standard repository. Attempting to add another PPA for the updated software just proceeded to cost me a day trying to fix the resulting broken dependency list thanks to anything that isn't blessed by the maintainer being ultimately unsupported.

Snappy is a shithouse replacement for a package manager, but it's a very welcome addition along side a traditional system where you want to be sure you can run something without breaking something else, something that Linux can not do without full time people dedicated to managing repositories in ways that doesn't break anything.

Re:.deb repositories

[squiggleslash]

So did they forget to tell their own programmers? (This is their bug, not our's. Oh, and BTW, did I tell you that if an end user manually fixes the problem, a cron job installed by Chrome automatically reverts it to default-architectures version?)

Re:.deb repositories

[Aaden42]

I need somebody to give me a sanity check on this snappy thing. Sounds like you're packaging your app and all it's dependencies in one archive, and installing that in a sandbox/chroot or just funky LD_CONFIG so that the binaries in the snap access their own private libraries. Is that about right?

So now with system-installed libraries like OpenSSL, if there's a vulnerability in OpenSSL, you patch OpenSSL, maybe kill/restart everything linked to it on the system, and life goes on.

If I'm groking snaps properly, the next OpenSSL vuln means we need to update EVERY SINGLE APP that uses OpenSSL since they all have their own private copy of it. And we have to depend on each of the developers of those apps to ship updates w/ new OpenSSL instead of depending on the distro maintainer to ship one copy of it.

Am I missing something? And sorry (not sorry...) to pick on OpenSSL, but in terms of libraries that practically everything links to & has had multiple serious issues in recent memory, it was either that or glibc...

Re:.deb repositories

[TangoMargarine]

If you want bleeding edge just reconfigure your package manager to track Unstable or Hurt Me Good or whatever they call it.

How long is turnaround for Testing anyway? Or does it vary too widely to really have a useful answer to that?

Re:.deb repositories

[thegarbz]

Ahh yes, just reconfigure an entire system to use unstable packages for the sake of one program.

Nope, I'll just install a Snap package.

Re:.deb repositories

[TangoMargarine]

Hey, I didn't say it was better. It just sounded like you were saying it wasn't possible.

Re:.deb repositories

[thegarbz]

No, don't get me wrong. If there's one thing that Linux is known for is that somehow everything is possible in one way or another.

But frankly I'm getting sick of the meme that you can do anything by (insert stupendously complicated instructions here), and doubly so when it refers to something as basic as installing a program.

Re:.deb repositories

[TangoMargarine]

Sounds pretty accurate. My first reply was a bit provocative to begin with.

Have a nice weekend :)

No. Just no.

[TangoMargarine]

The constant usage of "zero-day" is annoying enough already without taking it and applying it to something completely different.

Unless literally Mozilla is going to release builds of Firefox to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in Ubuntu...

Already so

[F.Ultra]

The problem with this announcement is that Firefox where already available in the Ubuntu repositories practically at the same day that they released binaries for Windows and OS X. A long long time ago Firefox where frozen just like the rest of the software but since then you got the newest version even if you used 12.04LTS so this only means that Mozilla will now do what Ubuntu have been doing but with a snap instead of a .deb

Looks good! My Tiny review.

[BrookHarty]

Downloaded the mate spin, and so far, looks really nice. No virtualbox guest issues, the virtualbox boot resolution error is gone. Installed zfs and partitioned and made some zpools, flawless.

All I had to do apt-get install zfsutils-linux zfs-initramfs and modprobe zfs, and it was good to go.

I tried loading zfs in the live cd, and checked if gpart showed zfs, but it didnt. That would have been the icing on the cake, create a zfs for a boot/root/swap and go.

I didn't have the restricted repo installed, so i just apturl apt://ubuntu-restricted-extras and had all the 3rd party installed.

Mate seems to be locked at 1.12.1 when 14 is out, prob not a big issue.

GTK is 3.18, so no 3.20 issues to worry about. Noticed clearlooks is now named tradtionalok, assume thats to fix the gtk2/gtk3 meta theme, no need for clearlooks-phenix anymore. Firefox Beta/Dev doesnt support GTK 3.20 yet, so nice to see. (And breeze theme is broken in 3.20 if your a KDE user, so wanting themes to match across gtk2/gtk3/qt, nice to see no issues there. Bring on unix themes!

Software Boutique would not work with my proxy. The rest of the system appeared to use the proxy just fine.

Looks like a good Mate spin to me! And LTS, my co-workers will be happy.

Re:Looks good! My Tiny review.

[Gavagai80]

Ubuntu is the distro. Mate is the spin -- it has all the same ubuntu packages, but a different default-installed selection. It's a useful distinction since there are so many different spins of ubuntu for each different desktop environment and it would be wrong to imply that any of them have anything unavailable to the others.

Re:Looks good! My Tiny review.

[thegarbz]

I tried loading zfs in the live cd, and checked if gpart showed zfs, but it didnt.

Errr ZFS doesn't run on a partition level, it's a bit different from the traditional filesystem so I don't think there are any plans to ever add zfs to tools like gparted.

That said there's been no problem running ZFS as your root filesystem in the past and I imagine there won't be a problem now either unless they royally screwed something up.

Do I even want Firefox updates?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I need to install Firefox updates often and quickly, because they typically include security fixes.

But aside from those security fixes, I really, really don't want to upgrade Firefox.

Starting with Firefox 4, I think that every Firefox upgrade has left me worse off.

Firefox's UI is now way harder to use, especially after Australis was released. Firefox 3.6 was easy to us because it had sensible menus, a sensible toolbar, a status bar, and other useful UI functionality. But that has been gradually stripped away! Now everything is under the hamburger menu, which totally defeats the purposes of menus. Menus are supposed to organize functionality, not obscure it by throwing it all in one place!

Useful preferences that I used to use a lot, like disabling JavaScript, have been removed. Now I have to dig into about:config or use extensions that repair the functionality that Mozilla unnecessarily removed.

I don't think that Firefox has gotten any faster, and I don't think it uses any less memory. It still feels really slow and bloated compared to Chrome and Edge.

Then there were the upgrades that forced ads into the browser, and included junk like Pocket and Hello. I wanted none of them, yet I had them forced on me!

I used to like using Firefox. But now I just get a bad sense of dread any time I see that a Firefox update is available. Instead of wondering how my web browsing experience will be made better, I instead worry about how my web browsing experience will be ruined yet more.

Re:Do I even want Firefox updates?!

[TangoMargarine]

Try out Pale Moon :) They've even got a Linux version.

Re:Do I even want Firefox updates?!

[TangoMargarine]

No, we just want the old paradigm of Firefox (3.x days) back where they didn't have ANY* pointless extra bloat like Pocket, Twitter integration, etc., etc. built in. If you want extra functionality, install the extensions.

So your entire post is apologetic nonsense.

*well okay I'm sure there was some but nothing compared to these days

Re:Do I even want Firefox updates?!

[TangoMargarine]

I'm not saying there aren't settings that you could change but what it is that you're constantly dicking around with in there that is a requirement for making it "usable"? Even if you have a particular preference, just set it when you install the browser and be done with it.

Way back in the 3.0 days it was just a couple settings in about:config that some people disabled to prune down the AwesomeBar behavior. Then it required an extension. Then they took out the status bar. Then Australis rolled and they started removing the about:config options you used to undo all this crud...

So yes, in theory you can do it just once when you install it, but there's quite a few values to twaddle and even some things that can't be turned off at all. Have you seen Classic Theme Restorer? It's basically 19 pages full of checkboxes and dropdowns, and I still haven't found a way to put the page title back in the window frame.

Plus with most new releases they screw around with something new and you add another variable or three to your list of things to unfuck.

I often see these critiques using terms like "barely usable" so I'm wondering if you can explain what your web browsing workflow is?

Firefox 3.5 pretty much exactly, plus a couple extensions. If I wanted no status bar, everything collapsed into one menu button, and no searchbar I'd be using Chrome, dammit.

Re:Do I even want Firefox updates?!

[TangoMargarine]

You are aware that the entire reason they started Firefox was to de-bloatify the Mozilla Suite, right? So not so much "always."

So you're saying that it's impossible to write software without buckets of bloat. Since you ignored my entire post so will I yours.

Re:Do I even want Firefox updates?!

[TangoMargarine]

What you think is necessary in a browser simply doesn't match what others think is necessary.

Except for the part where Mozilla is hemorrhaging users. So yeah, apparently it does.

And I'm talking about core features of 90% of program GUIs in the last 3 decades. Ditching menus and status bars are not "optional features." Oh, and as you say above, I'm sure that's just a couple k right, so it doesn't matter? But I'm the one being inconsistent, somehow.

they're moving in the very direction you wanted them to move in

Nope.

yet you're quibbling because what you really want is for them to support what YOU want them to support.

I'm going to tell you one more time that you're full of crap. I want the classic GUI elements we've all been using for the last couple decades, and most of the rest as extensions. If in doubt, prune it out. Which I've been quite consistent about in this comment tree.

Snaps are for LUDDITES.

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern app appers ONLY app apps, NOT LUDDITE SNAPS!

Apps!

Re: And the systemd unit file for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello m$ shill #1701! Please go the counter for your cheque! Ty.

Tabs fucked up

[F.Ultra]

One major disappointment is that the change Gnome did to xterm which fucked up tabs have now also been implemented in Gedit... First of all they spread the tabs over the entire width which makes it hard to actually see how many tabs you have opened but worse is that there is no real indicator for which tab is the active one. It might look prettier (not convinced there either) but productivity went out the window.

Re: And the systemd unit file for...

[armanox]

Who said anything about him being a Microsoft Shill? Being anti-systemd has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Ubuntu 16.04 minimal server step by step

[Coop32]

Found this this tutorial recently, where you may find the installation of a Ubuntu 16.04 minimal server step by step. The purpose of the guide is to show the basic installation of Ubuntu 16.04 that can be used as basis for our other Ubuntu tutorials here at howtoforge like our perfect server guides. However, server control panel is a question, but not in this case (I use ServerSuit).