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On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 11:20:40PM +0100, Mick wrote |
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> I looked at how long some packages are taking these days. I noticed that |
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> firefox and chromium take a lot longer to emerge than was the case 3-4 years |
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> ago. For example: |
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|
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[...deletia...] |
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> I am wondering if something in my configuration is causing this, |
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> rather than my laptop getting older for the continuously evolving |
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> and perhaps more demanding (in terms of resources to compile) |
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> software code. Have you noticed something similar? |
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|
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The firefox-24.5.0esr.source.tar.bz2 tarball is 119,830,718 bytes!!! |
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I'm an old fart who remembers back in the days of DOS when that was the |
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entire hard drive. |
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|
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If you think firefox is insane, chromium is stark raving berserk. It's |
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bad enough that the current chromium tarball is 185,717 KB (i.e. approx |
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190,174,208 bytes). What's worse, to paraphrase the old emacs joke, is |
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that chromium is a mediocre operating system that lacks a lightweight |
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web browser. Remember when AOL tried to turn Netscape into a vitual OS |
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on top of Windows/linux/etc? Google seems to be doing the same with |
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chrome. I already have firefox and opera and uzbl and dillo on my |
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system. Emerging chromium would pull in 25 additional packages. |
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"Chromium-OS" requires opus and speex and libsndfile and |
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speech-dispatcher and one of systemd/udev or eudev!!! It won't build on |
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my mdev-based system. |
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I remember the "good-old-days", manually building phoenix betas from |
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source, because it really was a lightweight web-browser. Those days are |
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now a distant memory. Things are looking grim on the lightweight web |
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browser front for linux. Using the car analogy, Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox |
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has degenerated from a lightweight sub-compact to an oversized |
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gas-guzzling SUV. Ditto for Chromium. UZBL and Midori are different |
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shells on top of webkit-gtk. Webkit-gtk1 has been deprecated in favour |
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of webkit-gtk2, which pulls in the latest gtk3, i.e. half of GNOME. And |
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for good measure, webkit-gtk2 also pulls in ruby!!! WTF??? |
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Opera appears to be no longer developed for posix (linux/bsd/etc). |
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I.e. linux is at version 12.16 while Windows is at 22.0! Given the way |
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browsers have bloated recently, that may be good thing. Security |
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patches still seem to be coming. But don't expect the latest/greatest |
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web-pages to work. |
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|
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The Dillo project is still alive and being developed, but it doesn't |
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yet support Javascript, let alone plugins. It'll be a while before it's |
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usable on most of today's web. |
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|
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-- |
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Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org> |
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I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications |
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