[gentoo-dev] Firefox bloat Was: chromium ...

[Duncan]

Kent Fredric posted on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:28:17 +1200 as excerpted:

> I really wish there was a way to run ancient firefox with security fixes
> :(
>
> I've started to really draw hate for all the new stuff they're adding.
>
> I put up with australis for a few years, but I've finally had enough of
> it. ( Not merely the look and feel, but how it was implemented has
> rubbed me wrong for far too long, much longer than the typical "people
> hate new things" period )

FWIW, the australis thing never really affected me much.  I had some 
extensions (and configuration mania guified native options) changing the 
look somewhat before, and have some extensions (and config mania options) 
changing the look somewhat now.  It did take me several hours (between 
configuring and extension browsing) to get the new UI setup to something 
I was comfortable with, but then I'm used to that any time I change 
desktop (kde) major versions as well, and this was a comparable change.  
I've never seen a desktop GUI I was entirely comfortable with as shipped 
and I don't expect I ever will, and with the browser being used /as/ a 
desktop more and more these days, and most people including me spending 
more and more time in it even when they don't use it /as/ the desktop, 
it's reasonably comparable, and the australis GUI intro /was/ in 
practice /quite/ comparable to a major desktop upgrade, so I /expected/ 
to need to spend that time reconfiguring the GUI and extensions after the 
australis upgrade, and it wasn't a big deal for me.

Tho I can definitely see the problem for people who actually /do/ find a 
GUI they like (or have trained themselves to like) without having to 
reconfigure/customize it, only to have the thing moved out from under 
them once they are used to it.  It's just that I'm not such a person, and 
both the before and after were and remain impressively configurable with 
extensions, so I never had that problem.

I am rather disturbed by bloat such as pocket, reader, and hello, but 
config mania has options to disable hello, and I got rid of the pocket 
icons as well, so the reader icon appearing in the address bar (which BTW 
also has much of the not-so-awesome disabled, config mania again), so at 
least I can keep them out of my face, even if they remain part of the too-
large audit footprint, etc.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman