Firefox 8 released [LWN.net]

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 9, 2011 12:34 UTC (Wed) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435)
In reply to: Firefox 8 released by linuxjacques
Parent article: Firefox 8 released

Yeah, the x86_64 version is there, but you still have to go hunting to find it... You'd think they could at least offer it if they detect you're already running a 64-bit version...

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Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:55 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (8 responses)

> Yeah, the x86_64 version is there, but you still have to go hunting to find it... You'd think they could at least offer it if they detect you're already running a 64-bit version...

I believe we (I work at Mozilla) don't promote 64-bit builds because we aren't confident they are fully up to par yet. There are various bugs on those that don't exist in 32-bit builds.

But if you're a power user (and if you're reading this here, you are ;) then have fun with the 64-bit builds. Expect possible breakage though.

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:38 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (7 responses)

That's funny, because the reason I finally broke down and tried a 64-bit build (of 7.0.1) is because the 32-bit build kept crashing repeatedly for me, and I just got sick of it... For a while, I went back to 5, which was the last one that was rock-solid for me, but eventually when I saw Adobe was now officially supporting the 64-bit Flash plugin, I decided to give 64-bit Firefox a try... And, you know what? It's damn near rock-solid again! I think I had maybe 1 crash total with 7.0.1 64-bit in all the time I used it, and so far have had none with 8.0 64-bit... So, I think you guys have things a bit backwards: it's your 32-bit builds that could really use stabilizing and improvement, while your 64-bit builds are far superior!

(I'm on CentOS 5, so the cause is probably some ancient lib version or something... But, all I know is the 64-bit build seems to work great, so I'm sticking with it...)

Still, even if you're not promoting it, I'd think you could detect we were already running a 64-bit version, which means we obviously want to continue doing so, and offer up the new 64-bit version for download instead of the 32-bit one... I'm not saying offer it to someone currently running a 32-bit version... *shrug*

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 11, 2011 18:11 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

I've been using the 64 bit builds of firefox for years and it's been a _long_ time since I've had a crash (OOM problems prior to FF 7 yes, crashes no)

but the point of only offering 32 bit builds, even if I am already running a 64 bit build (and so have 64 bit extensions loaded that will break if I install the 32 bit build) is not a good thing

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 11, 2011 22:17 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (5 responses)

> Still, even if you're not promoting it, I'd think you could detect we were already running a 64-bit version, which means we obviously want to continue doing so, and offer up the new 64-bit version for download instead of the 32-bit one... I'm not saying offer it to someone currently running a 32-bit version... *shrug*

Ah, interesting point. Are you talking about automatic updates through the browser itself, or what you are offered on the website, or both?

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 11, 2011 22:30 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (4 responses)

I mean on the main website, where it offers the newest version via the big green button... It always just offers the 32-bit one, it seems, even if I go there with a 64-bit version... It detects I'm running Linux, presumably via User-Agent, so I'd think it could detect I'm running a 64-bit version already, too... (I turned off auto-updates, so I'm not sure what it does there if running the 64-bit version...)

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 11, 2011 23:38 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

and especially when looking at a beta build

I actually got frustrated enough a couple of versions ago to use the ubuntu PPA and live with it updating every couple of nights because it was just too painful to track down the 64 bit build otherwise.

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 12, 2011 18:09 UTC (Sat) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (2 responses)

I could be wrong, but I believe the user agent doesn't say that you are on a 64-bit browser (it does say the OS, but not the browser build itself). So I'm not sure this is possible.

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 12, 2011 18:39 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] (1 responses)

It does distinguish... From my current 8.0 64-bit:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/8.0

And, from 32-bit 7.0 (the newest 32-bit build I've got lying around):

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:7.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0

Firefox 8 released

Posted Nov 12, 2011 18:51 UTC (Sat) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

Ah, interesting!

Ok, I filed a bug,

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=702030

I think it's a very good idea to do this, thanks for the suggestion :)