Chrome 12.x calls VL 6 "obsolete"

[vectornewb]

Just so everyone knows the easy fix for making backspace work they way they're used to in FF. ie: Backspace return to the last page you were on.

In the firefox address bar, type about:config ... hit enter. Search for the following in the search bar or even searching for backspace will bring it up.

browser.backspace_action;2

Click on it, select modify and change the default value of 2, to 0 instead. That's it ... sure most people here already know this. Just covering for the sake of covering it. In case someone hadn't known the fix.

[RonB]

Anyway, I just want to say that Chrome is a fine browser, whoever its parents, and it feels subjectively snappier than the others, even if the numbers don't show it. If nothing else it's given some much-needed competition and is leading the way in interface design, security etc, just like Firefox did way back when...

I'm not happy about Chrome "obsoleting" VL6, but it's still my favorite browser and I'm hoping that issue will be moot with VL7. Not only is Chrome "snappier" but I like the way it clears so much real estate by default. It has been my main browser for several months now -- not that I hate FireFox (I've upgraded to 3.6.18 and also have 5.0 beta on this machine). I appreciate all the innovations and hard work put into Opera -- but I've never been able to quite get used to it.   

[vectornewb]

Know whatcha mean about not liking the instant search. Who knows why google does the junk they do ? Well ... other than making any and every attempt poss to make google inc more $. Not too sure about them really. Keep hoping a lil known search engine will innovate and displace google. Seems they spend way more time trying to figure out new ways to bilk more money out of the web and their userbase. Than they do being a good search engine.

Anyone who's had the pleasure ( 2/3 people abouts in the US ) of searching for summin on google. Knows how much totally irrelevant and unrelated crap you have to spend time digging through to find anything worthwhile on google. Wish theyd concentrate on being a friggin search engine. Rather than coming up with more ways to boost google's bank accounts. What a mind blowing concept ... A search engine that actually consistently finds relevant stuff on the web !!! Wow ...

As for browser related VL stuff. Had to roll back to the latest FF version in VL lights repos. Updated ff, the conventional way to FF 4.01 and it started getting buggy on me. aka: search for updates, update available, downloaded and installed them using FF's interface. End result ... a buggy FF 4.01. So used the package manager to mark whichever FF version was available for reinstall and it cleared things up for me.

So atm, using Ff 3.6.summin ... When the latest stable out for it is already 5.0. It works well enough though. Guess I should learn more about my OS and nix to figure out how to keep things current myself. Though is a downside of using a distro that doesn't have as much support in terms of user numbers and devs to keep things more current. VL light 6.0 is a really good, lesser known nix distro imo though.

Have to say for the unintiated and avg PC user. Things like not having access to latest version browsers is one of nix's real weaknesses and where it comes up short to winblows. Though for M$, guess all the development work is done for them by the devs who maintain and release web browsers to da masses.

[nightflier]

In a talkative mood, so a few thoughts on Google, Firefox 

Google is a moving target that is picking up speed. I've been dodging instant search and other improvements, using the https version and special urls. Now there is a black bar at the top which actually offers an improvement: click the "gears" icon in upper right corner and it allows you to set your preferences without logging in. Hope that lasts for a while.

Firefox is also hard to keep up with. It takes time for the packagers to build and upload new packages. Then a maintainer needs to move them to the testing section and announce them in the forum. After a while they make it into the stable repo. The small VL team does not have the resources to immediately cover all the bases.

I manually installed FF5 using the official binaries and have found it to be a worthy upgrade. It is cleaner and faster than previous versions.

[vectornewb]

Sumthing tells me you aren't the avg nix ... or VL user though nightflier. First distro I used as an actual hard disk install was Linux Mint. They make installing .deb packages from outside sources a bit easier if I remember correctly. Did it a few times from the actual source ( people who make/release the software.) Got rid of LM. Cause it didn't make sense to spend 4hrs tweaking an install to lighten it up. When someone can just install something like VL light, antix ... etc and be good to go with the default. Plus they are closely based on ubuntu. Personally cannot stand ubuntu and think they're the most overrated, hyped and undeserving nix distro in history. Not to mention vast majority of buntu is just rebranded Debian testing code apparently.

In LM did it both by installing via .deb package and just adding the mozilla repo/ppa etc.

Not sure how to manually install a program in VL light atm. Still too nix newbish ... Would be a nice thing to learn though. Until then am stuck with FF 3.6.xxx, shrugs. Trying to devote more time to learning linux. Though it does take a considerable amount of time and we all have other things pressing on our time. I'm trying to start an online services business. Which it's ridiculous how many t's there is to cross and i's to dot with things like that ... sighs.

Guess just have to go with live and learn ( a lil bit at a time.) Might eventually be a 1/2 proficient linux user someday. Doesn't help having quite a few different distro's installed either. Some debian, some slackware ... one independent. Not everything works consistently the same across all of them. Makes it tougher than just having one to focus on. Though have nobody to blame except myself there. For going overboard with the distro hop. There's just too much great linux in the world to just have one imo, lol.

Chose to stop at 3 installs, but there's another 20 distro's I'd like to try. On top of the dozen I've already gone through. Back to the only so many hrs in a day thing. As for google ... Mentioned I personally keep hoping something will come along that works mucho better for web search and knock them on their butts. They've been dominating the web too long already, far as I'm concerned. They can take their browser and shove it. M$, Google, facebook should all eat **** and die in my opinion, lol.

Calling an OS someone is using obsolete is just craptastic, insulting and disrespectful in my view. Like they are so full of themselves they couldn't even be bothered to phrase it better. That's insulting to the OS user and the creators of the OS ... imo anyway. Google's momma is obsolete.

[nightflier]

I agree that Linux introduces a lot of choices that can complicate the life of a user.

That's life. Remember when the telephone was predictable and easy to use? There was one company, one interface, one way of doing things. Then came cell phones, feature phones and smart phones. Much more complex. But when they want to, or have to, people figure it out.

Don't feel bad about distro-hopping. It took me a long time before I settled on VL. Have fun and learn.

I am not too worried about having the latest and greatest, but when it comes to browsers, I want an up to date product. If you like, and are willing to copy and paste some commands into a terminal, I can post instructions on installing FF5.

[vectornewb]

Would definitely be appreciate NF. Already used your patented terminal instructions to upgrade to the lastest adobe flashplayer.

[nightflier]

Alrighty then.. usual disclaimers about unofficial hack, use at own risk etc.. 
Remember, you can copy each line and paste it into a terminal with mouse middle-click (usually the wheel), or key combination Shift-Insert

In a terminal:

Code:

su
cd
cp /usr/share/applications/mozilla-firefox.desktop /tmp
removepkg firefox
wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/5.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-5.0.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf firefox-5.0.tar.bz2 -C /opt
cd /usr/bin
rm -f firefox
ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox firefox
mv /tmp/mozilla-firefox.desktop /usr/share/applications

Explanation:
become root (it will ask for password)
change to root home dir (so we don't put the downloaded file in a weird place)
the Mozilla package does not provide a menu entry, so we'll preserve the one from the VL package
then we remove old FF
download the new file (you can browse to other versions at https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html)
extract it to /opt
change to /usr/bin
remove old link/excecutable, if present
make a link to the FF executable, so users can launch with just the command "firefox" instead of "/opt/firefox/firefox"
move the file for the menu entry back where it belongs

To update this Firefox install, just launch FF as root and click Help > About.. and allow it to update itself.

[vectornewb]

Thanks NF, don't see how there's much to lose. Am going for it !!!


I borked it !!! Through no fault of NF's highly detailed and comprehensive instructions and explanations anyone should be able to follow. Arghhh, am stuck on stoopid. Was copying the terminal commands from FF lol. Needless to say, not really sure how VL felt with I told it to delete FF. But evidently wasn't happy about my choices.

So didn't panic ... open package manager reinstall. Now for whatever reason when I get to a certain step says. error myusername/home not found or similar. Sheesh have been awake too long and should've paid better attention. Oh well ... still stuck with 3.6.xxx. Tried mk dir (the one that it said didn't exist.) Believe it's supposed to be mkdir ? Didn't even attempt to set permissions when I messed up with mkdir.

I'm too darn tired to worry about this. Though appreciate the detailed attempt NF. Nobody can say you don't give in depth instructions that shouldn't leave much room for error. I still found room though. *face palm. Oh well no better, but no worse off.

[GrannyGeek]

Nightflier, thanks for those directions. I'll do it manually, as it looks pretty simple. What about /usr/lib/mozilla? I'm sure I'll understand once I see what's in the extracted file.

Firefox updated itself to Firefox 5 on Windows 7, but on VectorLinux it needs some human intervention.
--GrannyGeek

[nightflier]

There is no /usr/lib/mozilla in the Mozilla package, nor the VL one. Other packages (jre, librsvg, mplayerplugin, vplug-in) place files there, so they are not affected by the removal or installation of Firefox or other Mozilla browsers. On my system, all plugins continue to work after this procedure.

Yes, only root can install/update/remove system files on Linux. For good reason. 

[GrannyGeek]

Not to mention vast majority of buntu is just rebranded Debian testing code apparently.

Which is perfectly okay in the open source world.

In LM did it both by installing via .deb package and just adding the mozilla repo/ppa etc.

You can use Slackware packages from non-VectorLinux sources, for example slacky.eu or linuxpackages.net. (linuxpackages.net seems to be down now. Does anyone know if the site is still around?) When I download from other than the VL repos, I install with installpkg. Try to get a package for the same version of Slackware that your VL is based on. For VL6 Light, it's Slackware 12.1.0. Also, the first time you start the program, start from a Terminal prompt. The package may not pull down all the needed dependencies. You may be able to add them later.

Calling an OS someone is using obsolete is just craptastic, insulting and disrespectful in my view. Like they are so full of themselves they couldn't even be bothered to phrase it better. That's insulting to the OS user and the creators of the OS ... imo anyway.

Chill out! There's nothing insulting about calling something obsolete that IS obsolete. VL Light 6 is obsolete. You would realize this if you used VL6 SOHO or especially VL7 Standard. Libraries are out of date, as is the kernel. The included software is also out of date. I'm using VL6 Light to write this. I'm not insulting VL6 Light. I love it; it's perfect for this computer. But it's obsolete nevertheless. Some software won't run on it because it requires newer dependencies. I'm really looking forward to the final release of VL7 Standard and hope we'll next work on VL7 Light.
--GrannyGeek

[GrannyGeek]

Thanks to Nightflier's inspiration, I've upgraded to Firefox 5 and SeaMonkey 2.1 on VL6 Light. All I needed was a little nudge and some idea of what was involved. Actually, I just put the expanded installation directories into /opt and put a symlink in /usr/bin. Plugins are working.

Adobe Flash also has a new version and I've installed that. Tomorrow I'll update Flash and the browsers on my VL7 RC2 desktop computers.
--GrannyGeek

[vectornewb]

Oh well, more opinions than there are people. Think it'd be just as easy to say your OS is not supported. As it is to say your OS is obsolete. How an OS, that's capable of running everything on a computer and doing all the daily computing tasks an avg user could need should be considered obsolete ... not overly sure. Even if it doesn't have the latest of everything or support for it.

Either way, dislike Google and the rest of the megatech corps. That won't change, shrugs.

Might eventually take another stab at manually upgrading FF in VL lite 6. More likely just wait till the new 7.0 comes out though.

[GrannyGeek]

I upgraded to Firefox 5 and SeaMonkey 2.1 in VL6 Light. I didn't use any scripts and it was simplicity itself. Here's what I did:

I went to the Firefox Web site and downloaded the latest version from the download link.
( http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/ ) I closed the browser and opened Midnight Commander to the download directory I use. I then highlighted the firefox-5.0.tar.bz.2 file in Midnight Commander, hit F2, and selected "Unpack selected file." This created a /firefox directory in my download directory. I then opened another terminal, did su to root, and moved the /firefox directory to the /opt directory.

Next I opened the /usr/bin directory as root and created a symlink from /opt/firefox/firefox to /usr/bin/firefox after I deleted the firefox symlink that was already there. Finally I tped
firefox
at a terminal prompt. Firefox came up and is working fine. I do get a couple of complaints but they don't seem to affect program operation. Plugins are working, though some are incompatible and were disabled by Firefox. These are the complaints:
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/opt/firefox/plugin-container: /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)

For SeaMonkey, do the same thing but with the SeaMonkey update file you can download at http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ .
--GrannyGeek