Firefox 40 is available

Yeah, even Firefox in Windows in VirtualBox on Linux is faster than native FF on Linux!

I suggest trying Nightly. We just switched it to GTK3, it has OMTC by default, and we're getting good positive feedback.

> My desktop still has jerky sub-60fps scrolling and browsing on my netbook is still an affair of "load tab, go do something in another window for a minute while it's frozen".

I have that problem with Windows, except that "go do something in another window" isn't an option because it's blocked the keyboard and mouse, too ...

Cheers,
Wol

I would argue that intentional breakages are quite rare. The most common breakages in my experience are unintended and they are simple bugs, that could be caught if more rigorous testing were applied.

I wonder how much time of people are wasted on debugging and pinpointing bugs of unfamiliar software. Developers who are familiar with code can do this much more efficient.

I do agree that this instability hinders Linux adoption in a long run. Windows has many drawbacks, but it is tested very well, so I'm sure that if I upgrade to Windows 10, my touchpad/wifi/bluetooth will continue to work.

That's a bit exaggerated. "core utils" are very stable. What changes most often is the the "desktop services" stuff, like hal/upower/consolekit/policykit/logind. I'm not really a fan of that stuff and I'm rather lost when it comes to it. The graphics drivers situation also affects applications a fair bit. They might run into the fact that opengl stuff running on a composited desktop is flaky, but that's not really because any api changed, it's just because of unfortunately complicated hardware without huge amounts of support from the vendor on this platform. As for desktop environments, and those mentioned services, applications don't really have to care if they don't want to, the application windows will appear all the same.

GTK+3 is the new thing, but GTK+2 apps still work (but try adding in opengl and compositing and maybe it's more flaky). GTK+3 was famous for breaking themes with every release, and non-gnome desktops on occasion, but not applications, that ABI stayed stable.

If you're not trying to add genuinely new functionality (to keep with the times I suppose), like new graphics acceleration techniques, linux has been stable. If you are trying to add these things, you're running into the tradeoffs of using a system with much less money spent by vendors on drivers. Those windows and mac graphics driver teams are huge... which isn't to say, "it's everyone else's fault", but rather that I think the limitations are understandable, and you have to take them into account when deciding what to use.