Firefox should definitely be available on a fresh install without altering the pacman config. Somebody got angry and I totally get her/him.
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artix (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artix)
(https://i.ibb.co/6FXxcHP/ARCH.png)
No.
https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefully.html#firefox
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/browsers.html#ff
Also:
https://artixlinux.org/download.php
Also, Firefox is available from unofficial repository omniverse (https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Main/Repositories#Omniverse) for those who disregard blatant privacy issues of Firefox.
The problem with modern browsers is that they take a ludicrous amount of time to build and block our pipeline for multiple hours. That's the main reason there isn't one by default.
Some reviewers also cried EOS does not include pamac by default. :D
I really don't understand these type of complaints about Artix. It is as it claims to be.....Simple. Fast. Systemd-free. There are usable browsers pre-installed which should be sufficient initially for all intents and purposes. Nothing prevents you from installing whatever browser you may choose. Artix isn't a system that tries to be "built for everyone" out of the box. I have used distros that try to be everything to everyone and I have to uninstall much that I personally have no use for, and install what I need. Artix just skips the uninstall part. ;D
Best regards.
How can an irrelevant comment on DW be a proof that we need to change anything in the distribution?
So no reason to use it at all.
Technically speaking Artix comes only with wanted packages, if you use the graphical installer, there is no reason to complain about the provided packages.
How is it? Is Firefox part of LSB or any standard now?
This dude definitely never used Arch and it seems he always used the vanilla desktops and never connected to any authenticated network. THIS is weird.
If EndeavourOS fits his needs, why is he even trying Artix? How is it relevant to compare two distros based on the availability of Firefox?
Also, IIRC EndeavourOS has Arch repos by default so the solution is exactly the same.
Not even vaguely a good reason.
There are many issues regarding privacy with so many browsers. Or to be more precise most versions of the three existent top level browsers that are reasonably functional.
A good reason.
Default are just that, defaults.
Apart from specialized LIVE distributions (like GPrated or some to crack WinXP password :D ), I always tend to REMOVE things installed by default. In many cases these are programs which are good for the job but not something I want and thus I replace most of them by my own selection (for better or worse).
Lets change Artix default web browser and include one for terminal and one for GUI.
For terminal I would go either for w3m or for lynx; for GUI I would go for Netsurf.
Problem solved, the supplied web browsers are minimal and extremely FAST.
For terminal, I recommend elinks. It is not minimal, but it is actively developed and supports many features which can be configured or not on compilation. Also agree on lynx, it is (was?) traditionally included by default in many distros.
For GUI, Netsurf is a sane default, good idea.
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.
As far as privacy goes, that is indeed a separate topic, when we go beyond the defaults, but should be taken into account when talking about Firefox. One of the splash screens in the graphical installer of Artix mentions two privacy-respecting browsers: Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium. They are available from universe, but are better alternatives to Firefox and Chrome. Anyone who is concerned about privacy (which everyone should be today, sadly) should strongly consider those two browsers instead. According to one of the linked websites from my previous post, Librewolf still has some problems, but even like that it is better than Firefox.
There are some who respond to criticism of Firefox by switching the topic to "browser engine monopoly", thus advocating the use of Firefox despite privacy issues. This is of course a logical error (accidental or deliberate). Privacy should take precedence over anything else. Both unmodified Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox disrespect privacy. Their forks which are made with removing anti-privacy features in mind are better options, together with addons such as uBlock Origin.
Just tried to build firefox on 12-core Ryzen 5 1600, it took 1:45:19 (excluding source download time). Is it too much?
As for topic, qt5-webengine and qutebrowser based on it are already in repos
Yes, I can understand some people might want to use Firefox instead of another browser they possibly don't know.
What I don't get is how you can install a distro clearly labelled "not for beginners" and then get put off when you have to edit a configuration file. There are other good distros out there for his use case.
Basing a 6/10 rating on one's own inability to choose the right distro for one's needs is simply ludicrous.
One of the results of fame - you get to meet your haters as well as your fans!
firefox is in Omniverse, firefox-esr is in Universe, both of these are Artix repos although not enabled as default it is true. There are also numerous variants of firefox in the AUR, with assorted patches from KDE, Ubuntu, old ESR versions, beta and nightly builds and more. Plus you can just download a Linux build from the Mozilla website directly and follow their instructions to install it yourself. And if anyone has trouble doing this, they can of course ask for assistance here. Interestingly the reviewer did manage to install Firefox (although from the Arch repos, which was probably not the optimum solution as there might be brief times when deps are out of sync in terms of version) so it can't be that difficult.
The review might make a useful observation for anyone who liked Firefox and was intending to use an iso unmodified to run as a live usb I suppose.
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.
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
The other things which e may be forgetting is the idea to use only Artix repositories on the build server.
And there is a change (I don`t remember correctly) that these big things may require a lot of Arch deps ?
Correct me if I am wrong.
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.
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.
The premise of the thread was availability in the standard repo's not inclusion in the iso's
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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://archived.forum.manjaro.org/c/technical-issues-and-assistance/openrc/53)
https://systemd-free.artixlinux.org/ (https://systemd-free.artixlinux.org/)
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.