CentOS - Mar 2008 - Firefox 3

Hi,

I just read the release announcement for RHEL 5.2beta:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv5-announce/2008-March/msg00000.html

And something caught my eye:

--8<-----------------------------------------
* Laptop and Desktop Enhancement
   + Suspend and Hibernate improvements
   + Re-base of the top Desktop applications
     - Evolution 2.12.3
     - Firefox 3
     - OpenOffice 2.3.0
     - Thunderbird 2.0
   + Updated graphics drivers
--8<-----------------------------------------

I see that the folks from Red Hat decided to completely ignore Firefox 
2.0: an eloquent detail.

Now it's more than once that I've read good things about Firefox 3. Much
less RAM-hungry than it's predecessors, excellent standards compliance, 
much more stable. What's the best way to get Firefox 3 on my CentOS 5.1? 
Is there some RPM for RHEL somewhere? Some SRPM? Or simply wait 
patiently for CentOS 5.2?

Aside: I use XFCE, not GNOME, so I don't have to go through the chore of 
updating some core GNOME components (like Yelp).

Cheers,

Niki

Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just read the release announcement for RHEL 5.2beta:
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv5-announce/2008-March/msg00000.html
> 
> And something caught my eye:
> 
> --8<-----------------------------------------
> * Laptop and Desktop Enhancement
>   + Suspend and Hibernate improvements
>   + Re-base of the top Desktop applications
>     - Evolution 2.12.3
>     - Firefox 3
>     - OpenOffice 2.3.0
>     - Thunderbird 2.0
>   + Updated graphics drivers
> --8<-----------------------------------------
> 
> I see that the folks from Red Hat decided to completely ignore Firefox 
> 2.0: an eloquent detail.
> 
> Now it's more than once that I've read good things about Firefox 3.
Much
> less RAM-hungry than it's predecessors, excellent standards compliance,
> much more stable. What's the best way to get Firefox 3 on my CentOS
5.1?
> Is there some RPM for RHEL somewhere? Some SRPM? Or simply wait 
> patiently for CentOS 5.2?
> 
> Aside: I use XFCE, not GNOME, so I don't have to go through the chore
of
> updating some core GNOME components (like Yelp).
This implementation changes the way pango, cario, and a new thing called 
xul-runner interact with several gnome things ... it is also tied to a 
newer version of nss ... which requires other system components to be 
rebuilt.

I would not recommend trying to build the RHEL one and rolling it into 
CentOS without all the changes.

However, it would be very easy to grab the binary one from the mozilla 
website and put it in a separate directory on you current centos-5.

This still a ways off ... May 7 is the end of the beta period from Red 
Hat ... so expect a release from them with rolled in fixes about Mid 
June and CentOS around the first week in July.

Here is a table of previous releases:

===============================================================Version	  Beta	
Beta End	  GA		CentOS
===============================================================4.0	11/08/04		
02/15/05	02/28/05
4.1	04/08/05	05/18/05	06/09/05	06/17/05
4.2	08/19/05	09/14/05	10/05/05	10/13/05
4.3	12/22/05	02/10/06	03/07/06	03/21/05
4.4	06/13/06	07/18/06	08/13/06	08/30/05
4.5	02/26/07	03/21/07	05/01/07	05/17/07
4.6	08/28/07	10/17/07	11/15/07	12/16/07


5.0	11/16/06			03/15/07	04/12/07
5.1	07/30/07	09/04/07	11/07/07	12/02/07
5.2	03/11/08	05/07/08

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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Niki Kovacs wrote:
> I see that the folks from Red Hat decided to completely ignore Firefox 
> 2.0: an eloquent detail.
2.0 didnt bring anything new enough to rebase to. The issue was well 
thrashed out about a year back I believe.
> Now it's more than once that I've read good things about Firefox 3.
Much
> less RAM-hungry than it's predecessors, excellent standards compliance,
> much more stable. What's the best way to get Firefox 3 on my CentOS
5.1?
> Is there some RPM for RHEL somewhere? Some SRPM? Or simply wait 
> patiently for CentOS 5.2?
Firefox3 isnt relased yet, so the first step would be to sit and wait 
for it to release.

-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/  : 2522219 at icq

Johnny Hughes a ?crit :
> 
> This implementation changes the way pango, cario, and a new thing called 
> xul-runner interact with several gnome things ... it is also tied to a 
> newer version of nss ... which requires other system components to be 
> rebuilt.
> 
I gave it a go anyway, and the result is very convincing. I grabbed an 
SRPM from FC8, and here's the results:

BuildRequires: hunspell(-devel), xulrunner(-devel), 
xulrunner-devel-unstable.

Requires: hunspell, xulrunner.

I'm using XFCE, not GNOME, so it didn't get more complicated than that.

The only thing I had to adjust was commenting every occurrence of 
Fedora's system-bookmarks package, which is both a build and install 
requirement, in firefox3.spec.

I have a personal checklist of unnerving bugs for Firefox 1.5.x, Firefox 
2.x, Seamonkey 1.1.x and Opera, which more or less forced me to install 
at least two web browsers (Seamonkey and Opera) to be able to use all my 
favourite web sites and web apps. Things like writing a very long page 
in a SPIP interface, launching a video on Youtube and immediately 
pressing the Back button, visiting the badly scripted site of the French 
employment agency, and so on.

Firefox 3.0beta passes all these tests without any single crash or other 
misbehaviour, so I just adopted it and got rid of the other browsers. 
Guess I'll install it on our production machines this week.

Funny thing: the development version isn't called Firefox, but 
Minefield, as a reminder of the "beta" quality of the software. The 
Firefox developers have a nice sense of humor. Check out what you see 
when you click on the "About" menu item:

http://www.kikinovak.net/images/minefield.png

Cheers,

Niki