On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 01:52:58AM -0700, Devin Teske wrote: > > I've heard certain noises on this list that the current port-maintainer > of Chromium has dropped the ball (not my words, just paraphrasing the > sentiment from the below thread).
My understanding is that the Chromium port maintainer's business model interfered with his ability to keep the port updated for security patches, and eventually someone else replaced him as port maintainer. The new port maintainer has been working on getting the port back up to snuff since then, which appears to be kind of a "starting over" operation in some respects. As such, one hopes that everything will be up to snuff soon, and will stay that way under new management. > > However, Freshports still has a less-than-favorable status for this > port: http://www.freshports.org/www/chromium/ One might presume that this is because the previous port maintainer's business model kept the port at v6.x, which is what is currently in ports. The current version of the chromium browser is 9.x, and I suspect the "minor" work done early this year is work on getting v9.x ready for inclusion in ports. > > Now... that being said, I have a co-worker that is running Chromium > every day on FreeBSD-8.1 and he's very happy with it. Though, given the > above consideration, both him and I have decided to _not_ deploy this > browser in production (at least until we can get some love on those > vulnerabilities). I have the version of chromium from ports on one of my computers, and used it off-and-on alongside Firefox and Uzbl. I might have completely replaced Firefox if the extension system was robust enough to allow proper implementation of vi-like keybindings and secure use of extensions like HTTPS Everywhere, but the chromium extension system is still a little too restrictive for that, from what I've seen. I stopped using Chromium at all once those vulnerabilities had been around and unfixed in ports for a few days. You should probably do the same. > > So, I guess I'd like to throw the query out there... > > If you had to pick between Firefox and Chrome for distribution to >1000 > FreeBSD systems running 8.1 in production... which would you choose? > We're heavily leaning toward Firefox, but would love to hear other's > opinions of Chrome (if it requires Linux emulation, that may be a > death-knell, leaving Firefox the only real choice???). Right now, I'd choose Firefox. If the recent troubles of the chromium port get sorted out satisfactorily by the current maintainer, I might well choose that instead. Unfortunately, you've stumbled onto the situation during what appears to be a transitional period. disclaimer: I am not involved with the chromium porting effort, and am not particularly privy to the internal goings-on of its ports maintenance. My information may be out of date or misinformed. Some of what I said is pure speculation. Your mileage may vary. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
pgpYlm5w1MgAq.pgp
Description: PGP signature