On 03/26/2011 08:42 AM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
The firefox developers, in their reciprocally infinite wisdom,
are pushing Firefox 4, which requires libstdc++.so.6 with
GLIBCXX_3.4.9 . The available libstdc++.i386 0:4.1.2-50.el5
RPM contains only GLIBCXX_3.4.8 . You can read more about it
here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2075033
The mozillazine moderator helpfully reminds us that our
distribution, though upgraded late last year, is out of date.
The moderator needs an attitude adjustment.
I really don't like this kind of moaning. The moderator doesn't need any
attitude adjustment, he is basically right. Despite the fact that SL5.x
was updated the last year, it uses the code base, which more than six
years old. This is FOSS, you get for free lot of software and if you are
not happy with that you can invest your time and energy and contribute
to the community.
While it is your right to dislike moaning, this is surely a valid complaint. At
least for business use, you can't upgrade an OS every 6 months. Just like how
Windows XP was supported longer than the few months after Vista came out, it
would seem like a good idea to maintain compatibility with one OS version back
(at least).
Have you read the mail and the forum mentioned above? The point is that
Mozilla's developers have decided not to support an obsolete version of
libstdc++ in the new generation of their software, for good reasons and
it is their right. Please notice, Mozilla, not TUV and in the given
context nobody needs any adjustment.
Or perhaps the firefox developers should be encouraged (with
red hot encouragement irons) to support the older library,
and proper upgrades. Abandoning millions of Linux users
who want long term support is ... Microsoft-ish.
No. The number of users using SL5/CentOS5/TUV5 as a primary desktop is
negligible, surely not millions, especially now when SL6/CentOS6 are out.
I can't comment on how many people use SL5 etc, but there isn't going to be any
sort of quick upgrade to SL6 in any managed environment. So hopefully Firefox 3
is supported for the next few years.
I don't understand, why anybody in a managed/production/critical
environment does need Firefox 4, right now, two weeks after the first
official release. Firefox 3.6 is a modern browser, still more stable
than Firefox 4 and will be supported for some time. If the paying
customers need the upgrade, TUV will do that, but I don't think there is
a need to do it now.
Regarding the numbers: Firefox has ~ 40% market share, Linux desktop
~1.5%, CentOS/ScientificLinux/TUV ~ 5% of Linux desktops => no surprise,
that Mozilla ignores it.
Vaclav M.
