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

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

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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