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Topic: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install (Read 2253 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #15 –
Quote from: phoenix_king_rus – on
Exactly, no changes were made
I also used to rebuild firefox on Odroid N2 with forced -j1. It took ~4-6 hours even in those conditions. Meanwhile qt5-webengine takes more than a day to build in the same conditions

This seems really backwards compared to my experience. qt5-webengine is annoying but it takes about an hour on our buildbot. I guess maybe we should re-evaluate.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #16 –
Artix repos should only contain its own skel-packages and the packages which may need systemd dependencies if installed from Arch repos. Other packages which don't depend on systemd should be directly from Arch repos. Why wasting time to rebuild the same things? Moreover, due to the build time gap between Arch & Artix repos, update on Artix systems may have dependency related issues, which we have seen so many lately.

My 2 cents.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #17 –
Quote from: strajder – on
In all graphical ISOs the decision was made to include browsers which are somehow "native" to the DE in question. Firefox does not fit that description. It is not tied to specific DE, nor even GNU/Linux in general.
The premise of the thread was availability in the standard repo's not inclusion in the iso's

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As far as privacy goes, that is indeed a separate topic
Indeed, which was sort of my point.
Users should be able to make their own choices about the browser they use. Whether an informed choice or not.
I don't see the sense in not including Firefox on ideological grounds. But then to include it anyway in omniverse after a two line addition to pacman.conf.
But I doubt it's exclusion was originally ideological. Other comments state it was omitted mainly due to lack of resources
Quote from: calvinh – on
Artix repos should only contain its own skel-packages and the packages which may need systemd dependencies if installed from Arch repos. Other packages which don't depend on systemd should be directly from Arch repos. Why wasting time to rebuild the same things? Moreover, due to the build time gap between Arch & Artix repos, update on Artix systems may have dependency related issues, which we have seen so many lately.

My 2 cents.
I've wondered about this as well.
When I first came to Artix I seem to remember that the Artix repos contained just those packages which needed altering to have a systemd free Arch-like install. The Arch repo's were still enabled but with a lower priority than the Artix repo's ( I could be mistaken).

After a while on Gentoo I came back and now the Arch repo's were disabled and most, but not all, packages from the Arch repos were now built and included in the Artix repos.
I've never quite understood why ? Seems like unnecessary duplication of effort ?
But my own opinion is that if Artix is going to build more packages than strictly necessary and disable the Arch repos it should strive to build and include all of them. The fact that it doesn't is no big deal to me. But I do find it odd. I've never been sure by what criteria a package is included or isn't.

A big difference between Arch and Artix is the inclusion of graphical installer iso's. Someone said in the thread that Artix is labeled "not for beginners" but I can't see where ?
Until recently Arch was hard to install. No installer.
Artix has installers.

I imagine the reviewer is not the first to be surprised by the lack of Firefox, in the default available repo's, after the initial install.

Personally I think if Artix wants to grow it should strive for full parity with the package set of the Arch repos except where systemd precludes this. Or not bother at all and just build the packages it must and let the rest come from the Arch repo's.
Not somewhere in between. And ideology should not come into it further than no systemd.


Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #18 –
Quote from: gripped – on
The premise of the thread was availability in the standard repo's not inclusion in the iso's
The review from the OP literally says "Just a very basic webbrowser". A web browser is installed only by graphical ISOs. When installing from the base ISO, only packages you list, and their dependencies, get installed.

So the thread is about the graphical ISOs.

As for the rest, simply put, it is the decision of the developer team. Just like the matter of not supporting pamac and octopi, those programs aren't unavailable, they just need a bit of configuration to install.

I will again remind that base install is the recommended way to install Artix, it is right there on the download page:

https://artixlinux.org/download.php
Quote
Base ISOs allow for a fully customised installation, which is done in a TTY and is intended for knowledgeable users. This is the recommended way of installing Artix and the team will be happy to support any issue.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #19 –
Quote from: strajder – on
The review from the OP literally says "Just a very basic webbrowser".
Come on! The reviewer states it's good that there aren't many pre-installed packages.
They are not complaining about the lack of Firefox after the initial install. Only the the fact that it's missing from the repo's.
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Installation went smooth, thats good. Artix does not come with many pre-installed apps. That's good too.
Just a very basic webbrowser. Awright, no probem, lets install Firefox.

Quote
Base ISOs allow for a fully customised installation, which is done in a TTY and is intended for knowledgeable users. This is the recommended way of installing Artix and the team will be happy to support any issue.
Maybe that should be reworded as to me it says the base install is only for knowledgeable users.
So a user who doesn't consider themselves knowledgeable will choose a graphical install.
I'm still not seeing anywhere obvious where it states Artix is not for beginners ? Which I don't believe it should be. Edit: To be clear we should welcome everyone.

I've never used any iso to install Artix, except once when I quickly span up a VM to check one of my settings against the default.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #20 –
Graphical ISOs also don't preinstall many applications. They have a handpicked limited minimal set of basic applications native to the installed DE. For example, GIMP is not preinstalled, neither is Filezilla and so on. Having everything shoved in would remind of those Chinese mobile phones with preinstalled garbage apps. Just no.

This discussion is getting very tiresome, so I'm out.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #21 –
Quote from: calvinh – on
Artix repos should only contain its own skel-packages and the packages which may need systemd dependencies if installed from Arch repos. Other packages which don't depend on systemd should be directly from Arch repos. Why wasting time to rebuild the same things? Moreover, due to the build time gap between Arch & Artix repos, update on Artix systems may have dependency related issues, which we have seen so many lately.


If Artix limited its scope in packages, you'd have even more issues. It's impossible to update perfectly in sync with Arch (we're only human). By the nature of being a downstream distro, Artix will always have a slight time lag behind Arch. Usually this doesn't matter too much but in the case of SONAME upgrades on major libraries, this can cause a lot of breakage for an unfortunate user that updates at the wrong time (the nature of using shared libraries). By having such libraries completely under the Artix umbrella, we avoid that issue (assuming our packages do a good job of course) and minimize such theoretical breakage. This used to be more common in the earlier days (if anyone around remembers that). A good example would be the icu library. This has absolutely no systemd dependencies or anything of that nature, but trust me you definitely want us to keep building that. Everytime that library updates, we have to rebuild a ton of major packages people use. If we just let users use the upstream Arch one, they would get breakage everytime it upgrades.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #22 –
Quote from: strajder – on
Graphical ISOs also don't preinstall many applications. They have a handpicked limited minimal set of basic applications native to the installed DE. For example, GIMP is not preinstalled, neither is Filezilla and so on. Having everything shoved in would remind of those Chinese mobile phones with preinstalled garbage apps. Just no.

This discussion is getting very tiresome, so I'm out.
I'd agree with tiresome but the word that most springs to my mind is surreal.

For the avoidance of any doubt I, me, myself, am only talking about availability in the Artix repos, not preinstalled on any iso.

I was, and am, curious what the criteria / rational for a packages inclusion in the Artix repos is?

In the case of very popular packages I can understand why a new user would be disheartened when they find them not available after installing Artix. Firefox is one example, another that stuck out when looking is Lutris. I could list more but there is no point.
The base install iso might be recommended but the graphical isos exist and will be used. I.E. less technically adept new users.

From reading the forums the sentiment I get is that the devs want Artix to grow ?
If that is the case imho you should maybe consider attempting to included as many very popular packages in the Artix repos as possible.
Or not be surprised, and a little defensive, when a new user leaves a bad review if something like Lutris or Firefox is not available without extra effort. Lots of people won't leave a review. They'll just move on.

None of this affects me in the slightest. I've just been giving my opinion.
Thank you all for all the hard work.

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #23 –
I'm not sure everybody is aware, but in the universe repo we have up-to-date versions of:
- firefox-esr
- ungoogled-chromium (more privacy friendly, 97.0.4692.71 is nearly done building at this very moment)
- librewolf (more privacy friendly)
- firedragon (most privacy friendly)
- thunderbird-artix (a bit more privacy friendly)
- brave-bin (though often a bit out-dated)
- tor-browser

And in the omniverse repo:
firefox

artist

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #24 –
Artix was originally Arch without systemd and Manjaro OpenRC which were related but separate projects. At the time Manjaro OpenRC was probably the (or one of the)  most beginner friendly non systemd distros, although conversely about every month you needed to do a load of stuff to update, reconfiguring polkit manually or something, because of the difficulty of running with lots of systemd Manjaro packages. Artix has basically fixed those issues now, and what you see currently is the legacy of that - graphical isos using Calamares, like in Manjaro, for example. Many users and contributors migrated from Manjaro OpenRC and are still involved, but now Artix is Arch based, a continuation of Arch without systemd. Artix grows but seems to evolve in a natural way, although there may be general ambitions.
So the history of Artix explains why it is how it is now, and you can still see a lot of that if you search about, it was also initially discussed on the Arch forum too:
https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/c/technical-issues-and-assistance/openrc/53
https://systemd-free.artixlinux.org/
 

Re: Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Dudemanguy – on
Really? That's considerably faster than I would have expected. Did you use the Arch PKGBUILD? It does like 2-3 builds for optimization reasons. I forgot what hardware the buildbot runs on, but it would take several hours at a minimum.

On my i7-8565U, a "basic" build of Firefox (no PGO/LTO, done on Gentoo) takes ~55 minutes (and I'm able to use the computer normally when it builds). I was also pleasantly surprised by Firefox low build times and requirements for a web browser. Since Artix's buildbot already deals with most of Firefox dependencies, including Rust, I'd say it's a viable addition (even if some optimizations might need to be dropped).

Chromium is a beast, though. Can't even max out the cores without OOMing, and with 4 jobs it takes over 13 hours, and I've avoided qt5-webengine on principle due to it being a Chromium derivative.