IceWeasel is the new black^H^H^H^H^H FireFox

[denny]

This evening I decided to update a load of packages on my Debian box at home. I'm running the Testing distribution, for those who are interested. After updating, I noticed that my Firefox icon on my taskbar has changed to something resembling the 'greenguy' porn links site icon from about 8 years ago _[1][2]. I investigate.

It turns out that Debian, after some kind of squabble _[3] with Mozilla over branding and trademarks, have decided to replace Mozilla Firefox with GNU IceWeasel _[4]. Which is more or less Firefox 2.0 with some code changes, and all the trademark stuff ripped out and replaced.

I am not fucking impressed with the alpha-quality of this crappy piece of software. I don't care if it's Firefox 2.0 or IceWeasel that sucks donkey dick, but it's fucking me right off.

EDIT: [the next morning] I've installed the 32-bit libs for AMD64 and then grabbed Firefox 2.0 from mozilla.com. It works just fine - in fact, it's a mild improvement on 1.5, a bit faster. So that answers that question. Now, back to last night's rant about Iceweasel:

So far:

1. it crashed within a few minutes of being upgraded
2. it then lost my session, despite having session handling enabled
3. it continues to not restore sessions, despite trying both the built-in and the tab mix plus session handling features
4. it displays blank or incorrect URLs in the address bar
5. it doesn't display anything in the status bar, for instance when you hover over links
6. it doesn't display the contents of the bookmarks toolbar
7. it doesn't add new bookmarks by dragging and dropping the icon from the address bar
8. it intermittently refuses to search from the search box
9. it screwed my HtmlValidator plugin
(although I suspect possibly the upstream provider is implicated in that one - the 64 bit package seems to be missing from his server at present)
10. typing / and then a search term doesn't seem to work any more, I have to do CTRL-F or Edit->Search

There may be more... I keep forgetting items, there are so many things that have gone wrong in the hour or two since I installed this piece of shit.

Plus the icon really is hideously childish. In fact, the entire piece of software seems to be of an amateur childish crap sort of quality. I want Firefox 1.5 back. I use my browser a lot, and this one is really seriously not fit for purpose.

11. I've just noticed, in the process of posting this entry, that the BACK AND FORWARD BUTTONS DON'T FUCKING WORK NOW. AAAAARGH. HOW THE FUCK DID THIS GET THROUGH QUALITY CONTROL???


[1] IceWeasel icon: http://new.metamathics.org/personal/denny/iceweasel.png
[2] Greenguy porn links icon: http://new.metamathics.org/personal/denny/greenguy.gif
[3] http://web.glandium.org/blog/?p=99
[4] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

Comments

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

HOW THE FUCK DID THIS GET THROUGH QUALITY CONTROL???

Funny you should say that, it's in quality control right now. ;)

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Hmm. My FF2 on FC5 is quite fine. (Compared to 1.5 at least.)

You might not care what it is, but apparently it makes a difference.

[djlongfella.livejournal.com]

About now I thought it would be amusing to offer you a copy of my licensed xp pro with IE5...but on reflection I'm guessing it ain't funny at all...Hope you get things sorted..

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Plus, your second footnote doesn't work.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I'm running 'testing', not 'unstable'... there's supposed to be some basic 'making sure stuff works' before they inflict it on me.

I think in this case it fails rule 5:
The operation of installing the package into "testing" must not break any packages currently in "testing". (See below for more information.)

...given that Firefox worked, and Iceweasel doesn't.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Hrm... works for me. Perhaps the image got cached in my browser - have copied it to my own server now.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Cheers... I think my most likely path of fixingness from here is to download the Firefox 2.0 source and compile it myself.

[babysimon]

Funny, I'm using iceweasel on etch too, and haven't had any of the problems you mention (apart from the shitty icons).

I really hope they get this trademark stupidity sorted out soon though.

[zotz]

I had most of thos eproblems with FF1.5 under Debian too.

And you haven't mentioned the memory leak.

[pooloftrees.livejournal.com]

If you want 1.5 back (I still use it on my old PC):

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5.0.9/linux-i686/en-GB/firefox-1.5.0.9.tar.gz

Alternatively, "use the source, Luke":

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5.0.9/source/firefox-1.5.0.9-source.tar.bz2

HTH

[(Anonymous)]

First of all, Debian does not ship GNU Iceweasel. Debian has _its own version of FF_ named as Iceweasel.
2nd - Debian Iceweasel is not a fork. It's just Firefox 2.0.0.1 with the name changed to Iceweasel. The CODE BASE IS THE SAME AS FF 2.0 with a few patches to improve integration into Debian (which btw, mozilla wouldn't allow). You have problems with upstream code!
3rd - I'm a happy Iceweasel user on amd64. None of the problems you mentioned apply here. I recommend to start out with a new profile and/or purge iceweasel and reinstall it. Icon "problem" is subjective. I like a new icon much more than original trademarked FF one.
4th - That's Mozilla which insisted on removing FF from Debian, not the other way round.

[easternpromise.livejournal.com]

Cool name though... <./easily pleased>

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

Debian has _its own version of FF_ named as Iceweasel.

I see major problems when the FSF feel the need to assert their trademark on the IceWeasel name.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you at least know where the name came from, originally ?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

When you say I have problems with 'upstream' code, do you mean Firefox 2.0? Because as specified in my edit, that works perfectly on my machine. I'm using it now with no problems.

I did try deleting my profile (and indeed also my entire .mozilla directory), to no effect, and also a purge and reinstall of Iceweasel, also making no difference whatsoever. It seems very broken.

I assume from your angle on the mozilla/debian interactions that you followed my link here from #debian-amd64 on Freenode - thank you for making the effort to read about my problems, and for posting a comment. It's interesting that I've been confused by the common name between GNU Iceweasel and Debian Iceweasel, given that this kind of confusion was exactly what Mozilla were trying to avoid with their conditions for use of the Firefox trademark (as far as I understand what I've read - there's a lot of self-justifiation and mud-flinging going on on both sides it seems).