The Sad State Of Web Browser Support Currently Within Debian

[Anux]

Just run Firefox with Wine and get rid of all the Linux dependency bullshit.

Amazing, you could also run a qemu machine on your Debian, install Win 10 in it and than use WSL to install Firefox. Or can you even run Wine in WSL?

I started my Linux adventure using Debian. Browser developement back than wasn't that hectic so it was fine. But hardware support under Debian stable was much worse. Switched a while between Unstable, Sidux and Ubuntu to finally settle on the latter. Now i'm a mostly happy Arch user.

Its really sad to see Debian in this state, maybe all this woke bullshit lately has left its mark on the project. At least I stopped supporting it around the harassment team period.
Even in the server space it gets replaced by Ubuntu, which i can't understand, since its the only place besides embedded where its still usefull. There's a Distro dependency tree somewhere on Wikipedia, you won't believe the massive bulk of projects depending on it.

Maybe the only solution would be to not ship fast developing software with Stable and instead rely on flatpack. No other ditsro has this amount of software shipped in its repro, its the selling point but also the most resource intense part i guess.

[sb56637]

I believe debian-testing is more up-to-date than Ubuntu. I've been on Ubuntu for probably more than 10 years, but I moved on because of old packages and getting tired to hunt for PPAs. I was on Kubuntu actually, packaging outdated Qt versions didn't do it any favors.

What I don't like about Testing is the long freeze period as they get closer (but not yet close) to the next Stable release. Even Sid freezes for a long time.

[darkoverlordofdata]

You could install a ChromeOS such as CloudReady, and then run Debian on kvm. You get a secure Chrome browser and a choice of Stretch, Buster or Bullseye - and soon, all three at once.

[kreijack]

Are there people these days who use Debian for anything other than as container images for CI build and testing purposes?

I do; and I am quite happy about that, but I use sid.

Going back to the topic, this seems to me a more general problem that happens when the period between the releases of a packages is shorter than the period between the releases of a distro.
I suspect that also RHEL has similar problem with the packages that have an high rate of releases.

Packages like browser , which are more exposed to attack, are the ones that trigger more likely the problem. But it is a problem inside in any pair:
- stable distro with a long life
- packages with an high releases rate

To put some numbers, the firefox 91 ESR spans 2021..2022; instead debian 9 starts from 2017 and will end in 2022.


I don't trust solution like flatpack. In fact these are small "distros" with thousand of library. I think that the final results is to increase the surface attack. IMHO a better solution is a "rolling" distribution. However a rolling distribution is obviously less stable than a "stable" release.

[royce]

Canonical saw this coming years ago and relaxed version locking for browsers. Debian should do the same thing. The mesa problem with newer FF versions is unfortunate however, not sure what could be done beyond packaging mesa with it into a snap or a flatpak or similar.

[CochainComplex]

Something slightly of topic. But aren't linux browsers the only browsers with rather bad support considering hd streaming of Amazon Prime, Netflix ...etc. I know it is depending on widevine lvls etc. But AFAIK Edge on win supports 4k for Netflix.

[CommunityMember]

Going back to the topic, this seems to me a more general problem that happens when the period between the releases of a packages is shorter than the period between the releases of a distro. I suspect that also RHEL has similar problem with the packages that have an high rate of releases.

In the case of browsers, it is compounded by the complexity to get things to build, under whatever constraints that a distro requires of their packagers. Browsers are now huge applications, bundling lots of other things, and/or bringing on a lot of dependencies. For some distros packagers (maintainers/developers, depending on the distro's usage of the term(s)) need to make substantial changes to the package to get it to build. While some of that work is transferable from release to release, some is not, as the upstream(s) do not care about downstream build choices. RH has resourced (paid) teams of people to do the work for the packages they support (it is one of the reasons they are far more limited in the packages they provide, because support does cost money), but not all distros, especially those using more volunteer staff, can assign staff to get it done, and to have it done quickly.

[Artim]

Something slightly of topic. But aren't linux browsers the only browsers with rather bad support considering hd streaming of Amazon Prime, Netflix ...etc. I know it is depending on widevine lvls etc. But AFAIK Edge on win supports 4k for Netflix.

Very off-topic, yes. It works under Windows only because it's so locked down. If you stream anything more than FHD (or SD on some services), you're out of luck on Linux. On Windows users can easily be prevented from simply grabbing picture and audio and that way make s copy of a film. But for all I know that's not possible on Linux and I don't see it becoming possible in the foreseeable future.

But yes, browser support on Linux is bad, especially on chromium based versions, except Chrome on ChromeOS for obvious reasons. Lack of higher Widevine level support and being quite difficult to enable hardware video codecs are just the two easiest points to be made.

[letsBSD]

I really dont see much problem here.

- debian is mainly for "server" distro
that being said - why the hell install there any GUI at all?

- browser are crap - I really dont know what can be worse that that crap even windows os isnt that crap as browser are!
Especially anything from google, any project. Intentions maybe ok, but how they realize things - dont be kidding,.....
Browser - so many updated - how the hell you want to make them secure/stable ? it requires time [ not only ofc ]

So stop "talking shit" of browser is being something people will miss in server os

[kreijack]

Canonical saw this coming years ago and relaxed version locking for browsers. Debian should do the same thing. The mesa problem with newer FF versions is unfortunate however, not sure what could be done beyond packaging mesa with it into a snap or a flatpak or similar.

If the problem was related to mesa only, it would be far simple to add another version of mesa as separate package. The point is not technical, the point is that this requires effort in term of implementation and testing.