Re: [tlug] Flash and Firexfox 2

[Jim Breen <jimbreen@example.com>]

2009/3/12 David J Iannucci <jlinux@example.com>:
>> [In case anyone asks why I'm not using FF3, I can't. It won't work. It
>> says it needs "libpangocairo...." and my oldish Fedora 4 system
>> doesn't have it and it seems none is available....]
>
> I feel the only reasonable answer here is to upgrade, whatever it takes.

I suspect that to get FF3 that is indeed the only solution.

> I'm not a Fedora user, but I see they're on 10 now.  Four just sounds
> way too old!  I've learned there is a direct relationship between how
> long you wait to upgrade, and the pain experienced.  Even FF2 is too
> old, by some metrics... I just upgraded to (the latest) 3.0.7 today
> because it fixed several serious security-related bugs in 3.0.6.

I'm in the "ain't-broke-don't-fix" school, and I only change distros
when forced to do so. This mainly happens:

(a) with a new system. My current system (Thinkpad R50e) arrived
3.5 years ago, when FDC4 was the current model.
(b) extraneous influences such as a HDD crash, being hacked (only
happened once), etc.

Generally (a) happens frequently enough that I'm not suffering too much
distro-lag. I think my 3.5 years on Fedora 4 is probably the longest I
have been on a single distro. So far this FF2/FF3/flash thingo is the
only slightly inconveniencing negative about falling behind.

> If upgrading an RPM distro is too painful, you could consider joining
> all us Cool (and Smug) Folk who are Gentoo users :-)

I'd sort-of decided to become a Debian person next time I changed, and
my experience with the EeePc and its etch-based Xandros has been pretty
positive in terms of the "apt-get update" and "apt-get install yaddayadda"
experience. I'm quited pissed off with the way Fedora changes releases
so quickly and shuts off updates. I'm open to arguments about other distros,
of course, but long-term stability is a major point with me. I like to put
something in, polish it up, and leave it.

My current Thinkpad is sailing well at present, especially since I
moved the RAM from 512Mb to 2Gb. The pain level is really far to low
to consider a distro change just yet.

I must say in closing that I have noticed that Microsoft is remarkably
good at having new apps work on old OSs (yes, I know why this is so,
and depends on oodles of DLLs arriving, etc. etc.). We recently ditched
the Win98SE system that the rest of the family had been using for 8 years.
It had become quite inadequate (64Mb of RAM!) in the face of modern
bloatware, but everything loaded - eventually.

Cheers

Jim
-- 
Jim Breen
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/