[gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[felix]

Something else about this seamonkey vs mozilla conflict has been
bugging me.  Why are the two even in conflict?  Firefox is not in
conflict with either one.  Can't they coexist?

-- 
            ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com
  GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[Michael Weyershäuser]

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felix@crowfix.com wrote:
> Something else about this seamonkey vs mozilla conflict has been
> bugging me.  Why are the two even in conflict?  Firefox is not in
> conflict with either one.  Can't they coexist?
> 
Just take a close look at the history of those two packages and their
current status and you should be able to answer that to yourself.

The Mozilla suite is what came out after Netscape decided to opensource
their communicator. At some point Mozilla devs decided that the codebase
was just too complex and rather than fixing it a rewrite would be more
appropriate. That's when Firefox and Thunderbird were born (and one or
more pther projects whose names I don't remember for sure... Sunbird?)

After both Firefox and Thunderbird were somewhat mature the devs decided
that it was time to let go of the Mozilla suite. They announced that
development of it was dead and there would be no more releases, not for
new features, not even for any kind of bugs. Some users of the Mozilla
suite were unhappy about that and started a new project which should
resurrect the Mozilla suite: Seamonkey was born.

Now Firefox was designed to live alongside Mozilla, thereofr the same
goes for Seamonkey. But Seamokey and the Mozilla suite are basically one
and the same program. It was just renamed at some point and then further
developed under the name "Seamonkey". That is why they don't get along
that good.

Another thing you should be aware of: As development (and even
bugfixing) for Mozilla has ceased quite a while ago the last release has
a number of security bugs that are well known and wide open. Any program
using parts of Mozilla are therefor vulnerable as well. For that reason
you shouldn't be using Mozilla and instead switch over to Firefox or
Seamonkey. It will be removed from the tree sooner rather than later.


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[felix]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 08:45:21AM +0100, Michael Weyersh?user wrote:
> felix@crowfix.com wrote:
> > Something else about this seamonkey vs mozilla conflict has been
> > bugging me.  Why are the two even in conflict?  Firefox is not in
> > conflict with either one.  Can't they coexist?
> > 
> Just take a close look at the history of those two packages and their
> current status and you should be able to answer that to yourself.

Sorry, that's not clear at all.  It doesn't explain why the two
binaries can't coexist.  The only reason I can see for not coexisting
would be if the binaries had the same name.  Even that wouldn't be
avery big ibstacle, since I have both emacs (emacs-21) and cvs-emacs
(emacs-22).  And why the gentoo repository cares a white, I do not
understand.

> Another thing you should be aware of: As development (and even
> bugfixing) for Mozilla has ceased quite a while ago the last release has
> a number of security bugs that are well known and wide open. Any program
> using parts of Mozilla are therefor vulnerable as well. For that reason
> you shouldn't be using Mozilla and instead switch over to Firefox or
> Seamonkey. It will be removed from the tree sooner rather than later.

I use mozilla without javascript, java, etc, which probably eliminates
most of the security problems.  I'd gladly switch to seamonkey if it
were stable, but the last time I tried it, it crashed too often and
too severaly, sometimes even clobbering the entire X session so badly
I had to reboot to clear the screen.  Ssh still allowed access from
other machines, but the display eas completely useless because of X's
rude departure.

-- 
            ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com
  GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[Homer Parker]

On Sat, 2006-11-18 at 06:46 -0800, felix@crowfix.com wrote:
> > Another thing you should be aware of: As development (and even
> > bugfixing) for Mozilla has ceased quite a while ago the last release
> has
> > a number of security bugs that are well known and wide open. Any
> program
> > using parts of Mozilla are therefor vulnerable as well. For that
> reason
> > you shouldn't be using Mozilla and instead switch over to Firefox or
> > Seamonkey. It will be removed from the tree sooner rather than
> later.
> 
> I use mozilla without javascript, java, etc, which probably eliminates
> most of the security problems. 

	Ok, you use it like that. I bet there are people that don't though and
the mozilla team doesn't have the time/resources to fix the security
problems, and upstream has dropped support. If you want to continue to
use it with those problems, great... Dump it in your overlay and use
it.. Just remember it's unsupported and has security problems and if it
breaks you get to keep both pieces ;)

-- 
Homer Parker <hparker@gentoo.org>

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[felix]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 04:35:43PM -0600, Homer Parker wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-11-18 at 06:46 -0800, felix@crowfix.com wrote:

> > I use mozilla without javascript, java, etc, which probably eliminates
> > most of the security problems. 
> 
> 	Ok, you use it like that. I bet there are people that don't though and
> the mozilla team doesn't have the time/resources to fix the security
> problems, and upstream has dropped support. If you want to continue to
> use it with those problems, great... Dump it in your overlay and use
> it.. Just remember it's unsupported and has security problems and if it
> breaks you get to keep both pieces ;)

I will have to stop using it someday, and I won't bother with an
overlay.  But last time I tried seamonkey it was unstable unreliable
junk.  What I want to understand is why seamonkey and mozilla can't
coexist.  They have different names, but even if they didn't, there
are slots for apache and apache2, as many different kernels as you
could possibly want, and ... mozilla and seamonkey conflict with each
other.  Why?

-- 
            ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com
  GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[Michael Weyershäuser]

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felix@crowfix.com wrote:
 > I will have to stop using it someday, and I won't bother with an
> overlay.  But last time I tried seamonkey it was unstable unreliable
> junk.  What I want to understand is why seamonkey and mozilla can't
> coexist.  They have different names, but even if they didn't, there
> are slots for apache and apache2, as many different kernels as you
> could possibly want, and ... mozilla and seamonkey conflict with each
> other.  Why?

From my understanding (I might be wrong here though) it is quite an
amount of work to go from "only Mozilla & Firefox" to "Mozilla,
Seamonkey and Firefox". The point is not the installation of these
packages but the dozens of packages that use some part of
Mozilla/FF/Seamonkey during compilation / runtime. Considering the
workload of the devs maintaining Mozilla packages in Gentoo it's not a
"they cannot get along for technical reasons" but a "doing this isn't
worth the effort as Mozilla is leaving sooner rather than later"
decision. The situation with all three packages in the tree is only
relatively short-lived (a couple of months), Mozilla is deprecated for
security reasons, Seamonkey considered a drop-in replacement.

I'm sorry it doesn't work for you like it should (I'm a Firefox user
myself), but I don't think this situation will change...


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[felix]

On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 03:34:06AM +0100, Michael Weyersh?user wrote:
> felix@crowfix.com wrote:
>  > I will have to stop using it someday, and I won't bother with an
> > overlay.  But last time I tried seamonkey it was unstable unreliable
> > junk.  What I want to understand is why seamonkey and mozilla can't
> > coexist.  They have different names, but even if they didn't, there
> > are slots for apache and apache2, as many different kernels as you
> > could possibly want, and ... mozilla and seamonkey conflict with each
> > other.  Why?
> 
> From my understanding (I might be wrong here though) it is quite an
> amount of work to go from "only Mozilla & Firefox" to "Mozilla,
> Seamonkey and Firefox". The point is not the installation of these
> packages but the dozens of packages that use some part of
> Mozilla/FF/Seamonkey during compilation / runtime. Considering the
> workload of the devs maintaining Mozilla packages in Gentoo it's not a
> "they cannot get along for technical reasons" but a "doing this isn't
> worth the effort as Mozilla is leaving sooner rather than later"
> decision. The situation with all three packages in the tree is only
> relatively short-lived (a couple of months), Mozilla is deprecated for
> security reasons, Seamonkey considered a drop-in replacement.

That makes more sense, if you mean packages have to choose at build
time which of the two to support.

> I'm sorry it doesn't work for you like it should (I'm a Firefox user
> myself), but I don't think this situation will change...

I use firefox too, but I don't like the preferences being so much more
limited than mozilla.  I could always use about:config or whatever
that is, but I might as well edit the raw preferences file.

-- 
            ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com
  GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[Duncan]

felix@crowfix.com posted 20061119004207.GA16779@crowfix.com, excerpted
below, on  Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:42:07 -0800:

> I will have to stop using it someday, and I won't bother with an overlay. 
> But last time I tried seamonkey it was unstable unreliable junk.  What I
> want to understand is why seamonkey and mozilla can't coexist.  They have
> different names, but even if they didn't, there are slots for apache and
> apache2, as many different kernels as you could possibly want, and ...
> mozilla and seamonkey conflict with each other.  Why?

The reason mozilla and seamonkey can't coexist is because seamonkey is a
replacement for mozilla.  Everything's being converted to depend on
seamonkey due to mozilla's lack of support upstream, and open bugs
including security bugs.  mozilla is on its way out of the tree, so it's
useless doing the additional work to make it and its config coexist with
seamonkey.

Basically, you have to make a choice here.  You can:

1) choose to standardize on firefox, biting the bullet in terms of what
you dislike about it, and set the firefox flag where you want gecko based
support.

2) bite the bullet on seamonkey instability and standardize on it.  FWIW
as an outsiders opinion (I prefer khtml based konqueror and don't have
any gecko based software installed, not because I have anything against
it, just because that's less to keep updated when I'd not use it much
anyway), I've seen no evidence that seamonkey is as bad for others as you
are reporting, which seems to indicate that at least part of the problem
is your system configuration -- with it following that some of the problem
is under your control and it's possible for you to solve at least part of
it, if you choose to do so and work hard enough at it.  This won't be an
easy choice as you'll have a lot of work to do tracing down the issues and
solving them -- and living with the bugs meanwhile, but it's a choice you
have.  FWIW, the bugginess should taper off medium term, making this
choice easier by then, while maintaining its higher personal satisfaction
rating.

3) decide to maintain mozilla, plus everything that you have merged from
the tree that depended on it, in your own overlay (or find one maintained
by someone else), doing the necessary work to compatibility backport as
long as you choose to maintain the overlay.  This may be fairly easy now,
but it will get harder and more complicated the longer you continue to
maintain it.

4) a mix of the above on a case by case basis, probably emphasizing 1 and
2, using /etc/portage/package.use to set the appropriate use flags for
individual packages.

Of the four choices, 1, firefox, will be the easiest, since it's closest
to majority/mainstream and you haven't indicated any issues save for the
limited options it gives you.  2, seamonkey, will be harder, but likely
be the best fit and yield the most satisfaction long term, unless you
choose to go with 4, case-by-case-basis.

As it's your system, the choice is yours.  I don't believe any of us would
choose to make it for you even if we could =8^), but those are your
available choices laid out as I see them.  Hopefully, this has been
helpful in clarifying the issues you face and the choices available to
you.  That has been the object, anyway. =8^)

-- 
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

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Seamonkey vs Mozilla cage match round two

[B Nice]

>I will have to stop using it someday, and I won't bother with an
>overlay.  But last time I tried seamonkey it was unstable unreliable
>junk.  What I want to understand is why seamonkey and mozilla can't
>coexist.  They have different names, but even if they didn't, there
>are slots for apache and apache2, as many different kernels as you
>could possibly want, and ... mozilla and seamonkey conflict with each
>other.  Why?

You'll be happy to know that the crashiness of seamonkey had been solved
a couple of months ago.  It has been and still is rock solid on my main
system, my better halfs system and <shudder> my gaming system (Read as
Windows XP laptop).  I've actually had more trouble with FF collapsing
then with seamonkey.  Of course YMMV

As for you main question.  Maybe seamonkey and mozilla clash with each
other because they are so close to being the same thing.  Some dev
likely looked at it and said that they're too close to bother
differentiating.  Hence your current problem, and the problem I faced
when seamonkey was first dropped into the ebuild system with nothing
being built against it.

B Vance 

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