Firefox 126 Available - Adds "Linux" To The Android User Agent String

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox 126 Available - Adds "Linux" To The Android User Agent String

Mozilla has pushed out its release images of the Firefox 126 web browser ahead of its official debut on Tuesday...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-126-Download

[Vistaus]

in b4 "but Android is not real Linux"

[X_m7]

Wonder what sites actually had problems without having Linux in the user agent string, especially considering that I ended up changing Firefox's user agent to that of the Android version on my PinePhone instead of just having "Mobile" on there like in the distro's default settings lol.

[timofonic]

Please wake me only when they add support for digital certificates and eIDs, essential for egovernment and eadministration crap

[Gusar]

in b4 "but Android is not real Linux"

What is "real Linux"?

There's desktop distros which use glibc, coreutils, X or Wayland and (usually) a GTK or Qt based environment. Then there's Android which uses none of these, has instead its completely own environment. So while the two OSes use the same kernel, their userspaces are *very* different.

[bosjc]

What is "real Linux"?

There's desktop distros which use glibc, coreutils, X or Wayland and (usually) a GTK or Qt based environment. Then there's Android which uses none of these, has instead its completely own environment. So while the two OSes use the same kernel, their userspaces are *very* different.

Real Linux is the Linux Kernel. Anything on top of that is just a different userspace.

[Quackdoc]

now they just need to make desktop mode a real desktop mode and solve a bunch of perf issues. the desktop mode thing is a real kicker sometimes though.

[andyprough]

in b4 "but Android is not real Linux"

It would make it a lot easier if the term "Linux" was used properly to refer to a kernel, and not to talk about an imaginary "general purpose OS" that only exists in the minds of the technically illiterate.

[avis]

in b4 "but Android is not real Linux"

We've had this discussion a billion times already.

When people say/use/talk about "Linux", they mean Linux distros with userspace, not just the kernel alone. The kernel alone can do nothing, it's an API to your hardware. Android has almost nothing from the average Linux distro, not even the kernel itself, as it uses a special very patched old version. Lastly, the Linux kernel in Android can be replaced by anything which provides the same APIs. Android is not "Linux", period. Some bits and pieces, maybe.

Secondly, no one really cares except for purists and devoted Linux fans for whom Android is "a Linux success story", except it's a failure story because the mainline kernel looks to be completely incompatible with anything reliable/enterprisy/mass produced. And the mainline kernel is found neither in RHEL, nor in Android.

[andyprough]

now they just need to make desktop mode a real desktop mode and solve a bunch of perf issues. the desktop mode thing is a real kicker sometimes though.

I'm assuming you are talking about the mobile browser's desktop view. In my experience it fails to switch to a real desktop view just as often on Brave's mobile browser, which probably indicates all chromium-based browsers fail as well. Which tells me that the problem is more likely on the end of the web devs. I could be wrong though, not my area of expertise.