# Firefox/Chrome support in FreeBSD



## Beastie7 (Aug 10, 2018)

i'm considering switching (or at least partially) to FreeBSD due to my personal qualms with Apples direction of their Macs. But I need a well supported, working browser to make the switch. How's the browser support nowadays? FreshPorts indicates the latest versions each are ported; any anomalies i should be aware of?

Thanks.


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## vermaden (Aug 10, 2018)

Both work ok, latest version or ESR for Firefox if you prefer that.

There is also epiphany/midori/iridium/waterfox/qutebrowser/seamonkey/surf/...


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 10, 2018)

Firefox works great. Chrome (Chromium) has issues with tabs hanging on some sites but otherwise works well.


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## alexseitsinger (Aug 11, 2018)

I would make sure that your wireless adapter is supported. I have 2012 Macbook Pro with a wifi adapter that isn't supported (BCM4331). This isn't the worst thing ever if you have access to an ethernet cord, but it makes it tough to do certain things. If its not supported, and you know you can replace the wifi card, I would try that. Otherwise you will have to resort to dedicating one of your precious usb ports to a supported dongle for wireless access. Its unfortunate that this card isn't supported on FreeBSD because I have little to complain about otherwise, for the most part.


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## hitest (Aug 11, 2018)

Fire Fox functions well for me.


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## jpierri (Aug 11, 2018)

hitest said:


> Fire Fox functions well for me.


It works fine for me too.


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## chrisb (Aug 11, 2018)

I cannot seem to be able to get any extensions to install in firefox or waterfox.  when I click on add, it downloads them but nothing shows up anywhere.... Any ideas??


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## Beastie7 (Aug 12, 2018)

alexseitsinger said:


> I would make sure that your wireless adapter is supported. I have 2012 Macbook Pro with a wifi adapter that isn't supported (BCM4331). This isn't the worst thing ever if you have access to an ethernet cord, but it makes it tough to do certain things. If its not supported, and you know you can replace the wifi card, I would try that. Otherwise you will have to resort to dedicating one of your precious usb ports to a supported dongle for wireless access. Its unfortunate that this card isn't supported on FreeBSD because I have little to complain about otherwise, for the most part.



I'm glad you've mentioned this. I'm assuming this is the pre-Retina 2012 macs? I'm particularly fond of those due to being able to replace the parts yourself.

Buying a cheap x220 or T420 from the fleabay is enticing as well.


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## vermaden (Aug 12, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> Buying a cheap x220 or T420 from the fleabay is enticing as well.


That is the best possible option no matter if You want to run BSD or anything else.


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## alexseitsinger (Aug 12, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> I'm glad you've mentioned this. I'm assuming this is the pre-Retina 2012 macs? I'm particularly fond of those due to being able to replace the parts yourself.
> 
> Buying a cheap x220 or T420 from the fleabay is enticing as well.



You are correct. It is a pre-retina Macbook Pro. They are nice, but you can't go wrong with the Thinkpads either. The price point is hard to argue. I will probably buy myself one at some point. Vermaden has a nice walkthrough for setting up FreeBSD on a thinkpad on his blog. If you go that direction it might be helpful.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 12, 2018)

alexseitsinger said:


> You are correct. It is a pre-retina Macbook Pro. They are nice, but you can't go wrong with the Thinkpads either. The price point is hard to argue. I will probably buy myself one at some point. Vermaden has a nice walkthrough for setting up FreeBSD on a thinkpad on his blog. If you go that direction it might be helpful.



That's great to hear. Thanks


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## Phishfry (Aug 12, 2018)

vermaden said:


> That is the best possible option no matter if You want to run BSD or anything else.


He said he wants user serviceable parts.
I think its fair to tell him IBM Laptops uses a BIOS whitelist and you cant put whatever you want in the slots.
Quite preposterous that all these people goat how great the IBM's are.
I don't get it.
Want to slip in an Atheros module. Forget it.
Want to slip in a Sierra modem. Forget it.
Look for IBM FRU units only. Maybe then it might work.

I know what I am saying is not popular. But coming from the old school this is bull.
Whitelist computers should be called out for the bastards they are. Not promoted.


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## Phishfry (Aug 12, 2018)

You could consider paying Oleh for your fixed BIOS....
This is sarcasm to drive my point home.


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## vermaden (Aug 12, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> He said he wants user serviceable parts.
> I think its fair to tell him IBM Laptops uses a BIOS whitelist and you cant put whatever you want in the slots.
> Quite preposterous that all these people goat how great the IBM's are.
> I don't get it.
> ...


Its not about IBM or Lenovo.

T420/T520/W520/X220 are laptops with THE BEST keyboard layout out there - on par with DELL D630/D830 and close to DELL E6400/E6410/E6500/E6510.

About whitelisting, you can flash any of those ThinkPads with modified bios that allows you to install ANYTHING.

Today there are no laptops with real/usable keyboards, the ThinkPad 25 Anniversary is an exception but they made only 5000 of them ... and they cost $1800 not $180 ...


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## Phishfry (Aug 12, 2018)

vermaden, Please don't take offense at what I said. It was not directed at you. I have strong opinions about hardware freedom.

Some people might never even crack open the case so the issue is moot.


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## vermaden (Aug 12, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> vermaden, Please don't take offense at what I said. It was not directed at you. I have strong opinions about hardware freedom.
> 
> Some people might never even crack open the case so the issue is moot.


I do not take it personally, no problem.

Its just BIG enigma for me why PINEBOOK or LIBREM 'free' laptops do not have REAL/USABLE 7-row ketboard like the ThinkPads. Why they have this island shit wannabe keyboard bullshit ...


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## Maxnix (Aug 12, 2018)

vermaden said:


> Its just BIG enigma for me why PINEBOOK or LIBREM 'free' laptops do not have REAL/USABLE 7-row ketboard like the ThinkPads. Why they have this island shit wannabe keyboard bullshit ...


Probably because the majority of users (aka the average ones) consider it more "stylish". Generally speaking, I see the tendence of  sacrificing functionality in favour of aesthetic a lot these days...


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## vermaden (Aug 14, 2018)

Maxnix said:


> Probably because the majority of users (aka the average ones) consider it more "stylish". Generally speaking, I see the tendence of  sacrificing functionality in favour of aesthetic a lot these days...


Do you really believe that Librem or Pinebook laptops are targeted at 'majority users'?


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## cpm@ (Aug 14, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Firefox works great. Chrome (Chromium) has issues with tabs hanging on some sites but otherwise works well.



FYI the issue of hanging tabs is fixed in r337328.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1029362715838636032


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 15, 2018)

Beastie7

---- about browsers ---------------
I abandoned Chromium for Firefox a few months ago due to the
problem of hanging tabs.

Firefox works well, it has only a problem, it eats a lot of memory and
it releases it only when you kill ALL its windows.

I am re-trying Chromium right now, I can tell you that it seems to work.

_ I edit my original message of 10 mins ago _

*** PROBLEM: Whatsapp still hangs *****
I will report in bugzilla.


```
$> pkg info | grep chrom
chromium-67.0.3396.87
```

-----------------------------------------------------------


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## cpm@ (Aug 15, 2018)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> Beastie7
> 
> ---- about browsers ---------------
> I abandoned Chromium for Firefox a few months ago due to the
> ...



Note that the fix for chromium is only available in -CURRENT. It will be MFC'ed as soon as possible.

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=212812#c98


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 15, 2018)

Thank you for info cpm@ !

I gave it a shot because in bugzilla timp87 [comment 94] said:
"I can't any problems on chromium-67.0.3396.87 anymore."
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=212812

Running -CURRENT as desktop is out of my reach unfortunately.
I must stick to stable and packages, slow machine.

Can you reproduce my bug in -CURRENT ?
_edited_ The bug is: "if you move to a whatsapp channel containing a video
then Whatsapp tab hangs".

Sorry for beginner question but what does "MFC" mean ?

bye
n.


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## cpm@ (Aug 15, 2018)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> Thank you for info cpm@ !
> 
> I gave it a shot because in bugzilla timp87 [comment 94] said:
> "I can't any problems on chromium-67.0.3396.87 anymore."
> ...





> Can you reproduce my bug in -CURRENT ?



Sure! I'll take a look ASAP.


> Sorry for beginner question but what does "MFC" means ?



https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/freebsd-glossary.html#mfc-glossary


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## kpa (Aug 15, 2018)

MFC = "Merged From CURRENT". It means that the changes that have been made to the CURRENT branch are applied to the other (revision control) branch.  The changeset (and the related discussion) to CURRENT in question is this I believe:

https://reviews.freebsd.org/D16515


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## b6s6d6 (Aug 15, 2018)

cpm@ said:


> FYI the issue of hanging tabs is fixed in r337328.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1029362715838636032


That's great news!
Personally this would basically leave just 1 important issue to solve:
I can't seem to make Chromium use hardware acceleration. Even when trying to force it, is always "software-only".
Do you know by chance how to solve it? BTW I'm using 11.2-RELEASE, intel driver (sna accel method) with drm-stable-kmod.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 15, 2018)

b6s6d6 said:


> That's great news!
> Personally this would basically leave just 1 important issue to solve:
> I can't seem to make Chromium use hardware acceleration. Even when trying to force it, is always "software-only".
> Do you know by chance how to solve it? BTW I'm using 11.2-RELEASE, intel driver (sna accel method) with drm-stable-kmod.



slow down, it is still not ready for us in STABLE ... i just made the same mistake

We need to wait a bit.


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## cpm@ (Aug 15, 2018)

b6s6d6 said:


> That's great news!
> Personally this would basically leave just 1 important issue to solve:
> I can't seem to make Chromium use hardware acceleration. Even when trying to force it, is always "software-only".
> Do you know by chance how to solve it? BTW I'm using 11.2-RELEASE, intel driver (sna accel method) with drm-stable-kmod.



Please, apply the attached patch of the PR 230450 and rebuild www/chromium.


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## b6s6d6 (Aug 15, 2018)

cpm@ said:


> Please, apply the attached patch of the PR 230450 and rebuild www/chromium.


Thanks. Good to know there's a fix already


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## kpect (Aug 16, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> i'm considering switching (or at least partially) to FreeBSD due to my personal qualms with Apples direction of their Macs. But I need a well supported, working browser to make the switch. How's the browser support nowadays? FreshPorts indicates the latest versions each are ported; any anomalies i should be aware of?
> 
> Thanks.



Hi,
I noticed one problem with Firefox from ports, it crashes when you zoom out on maps.yandex.ru, with following error:
IPDL protocol error: could not lookup id for PTexture
that's very annoying.


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## cpm@ (Aug 16, 2018)

kpect said:


> Hi,
> I noticed one problem with Firefox from ports, it crashes when you zoom out on maps.yandex.ru, with following error:
> IPDL protocol error: could not lookup id for PTexture
> that's very annoying.



The issue is already fixed in -CURRENT (r337328).

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476130#c7


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## kpect (Aug 16, 2018)

cpm@ said:


> The issue is already fixed in -CURRENT (r337328).
> 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476130#c7



MMm, cool! Thanx cpm@


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## Maxnix (Aug 16, 2018)

vermaden said:


> Do you really believe that Librem or Pinebook laptops are targeted at 'majority users'?


Not yet, but I think they would extend their user base one day. And this is the reason for such design decision IMHO.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 16, 2018)

I installed the new version of www/chromium on my workstation this morning and, after two hours of usage, I have not had any hanging or other issues on FreeBSD-11.2p1 RELEASE. Easily I would have had the issue within minutes.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 16, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I installed the new version of www/chromium on my workstation this morning and, after two hours of usage, I have not had any hanging or other issues on FreeBSD-11.2p1 RELEASE. Easily I would have had the issue within minutes.


how did you install ? pkg install ?
if so, there are still problems with Whatsapp, it hangs systematically. I have been told to wait for use on STABLE in bugzilla. bye

sorry for format, phone typing


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 16, 2018)

Nicola Mingotti Installed from ports. It only became available to me last night. If you are using pkg then I presume you need to wait a while.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 16, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Nicola Mingotti Installed from ports. It only became available to me last night. If you are using pkg then I presume you need to wait a while.



I will wait, prefer to wait than compile for 2 days


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## cpm@ (Aug 17, 2018)

Nicola Mingotti

I just use WhatsApp Web and it works flawlessly.


```
% uname -a
FreeBSD bsd.nix 12.0-ALPHA1 FreeBSD 12.0-ALPHA1 #0 r337834: Wed Aug 15 18:06:41 CEST 2018     root@bsd.nix:/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/sys/GENERIC  amd64

% chrome --version
Chromium 68.0.3440.106
```


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## NapoleonWils0n (Aug 18, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> i'm considering switching (or at least partially) to FreeBSD due to my personal qualms with Apples direction of their Macs. But I need a well supported, working browser to make the switch. How's the browser support nowadays? FreshPorts indicates the latest versions each are ported; any anomalies i should be aware of?
> 
> Thanks.


Hi Beastie7
Ive been running Freebsd on my macbook air 11inch 2011 for the last year and it works like a dream

I had to build a custom kernel to get the keyboard backlight working for my mac air,
but if your have a later model mac you should be ok

The only thing that isnt working with Freebsd 11.2 is the broadcom wifi card
but Freebsd 12 is adding support for the broadcom wifi cards used on the mac so that will fix that issue

i believe Freebsd 12 should be released towards the end of 2018

I have written a guide on how to set up Freebsd on the Mac with EFI boot
Freebsd use's a legacy boot which means it takes 30 seconds for the Freebsd boot screen to load up

But you can fix that issue by blessing the EFI partition so Freebsd will boot up straight away

Heres my guide on setting up Freebsd with EFI boot on the mac
Freebsd EFI boot on Mac hardware

These are my notes on setting up Freebsd on a mac
Freebsd mac hardware install

Over the last year on Freebsd i have made some notes which you may find usefull
Freebsd notes on github

And here are my dotfiles for Freebsd

Freebsd root partition dotfiles

Freebsd home directory dotfiles

Freebsd home bin directory scripts

I have found Firefox works a lot better than Chromium if thats any help
Also you will probably want to use packages and not ports as ports take quite a while to build at least on my old Mac book air with only 4gig of ram, and dont mix ports and packages use one or the other

Apart from the ZFS file system and pf firewall the other killer feature on Freebsd is the audio which is amazing
i use a usb dac with bitperfect audio enabled on Freebas and it blows the audio on the mac and linux clean out of the water

I have a couple of scripts to enable bitperfect audio and to switch audio sources
Bit Perfect audio switching script

Switch audio devices script

I would also recommend using the i3wm tiling window manager instead of Desktop enviornment like Gnome, KDE or XFCE
Because it uses a lot less resources than a Desktop enviornment
i3m tiling window manager

The mini display port on the Mac also works with adaptors so i can use it either with an hdmi adaptor or with a ethernet adaptor

Also supend and resume with Freebsd works so you can close the lid and the mac will go to sleep
Suspend and resume doesnt work on any Linux distro i have run of the Mac and i have tried ubuntu, debian, linux mint and arch linux and it didnt work on any of then, but it does work on Freebsd

As i said the only thing that isnt working on my macbook air 11 inch 2011 model with Freebsd 11.2 is the broadcom wifi card
but Freebsd 12 is adding support for the broadcom wifi cards and should be out at the end of the year i believe

I would actually say that Freebsd runs better than Mac osx on Mac hardware and you will have a proper packages manager instead of having to use homebrew on the mac to install open source software

So i would recommend making the switch from OSX to Freebsd i know i couldnt go back now


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## bsdexplorations (Sep 5, 2018)

chrisb said:


> I cannot seem to be able to get any extensions to install in firefox or waterfox.  when I click on add, it downloads them but nothing shows up anywhere.... Any ideas??



i'm having the same problem. extensions that were installed before upgrading to quantum continued to work. but any new installations fail. and i deleted that profile with the working extensions...


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## scottro (Sep 5, 2018)

I know many extensions are no longer compatible. I only use two in FreeBSD, Firefox 62.0, vimium for Firefox and ublock orig, both of which installed without problem.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Sep 5, 2018)

Since Firefox ESR started using the Quantum Strangeness of Firefox I went ahead and switched to Firefox and got it over with.

I keep Seamonkey and Palemoon installed, too, in case there is a vulnerability with one. They all work fine for me, and I have the extensions I deem necessary.


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## blackhaz (Sep 5, 2018)

Hey, if you're coming from Mac you may be interested in my experience: 
http://trafyx.com/?p=2551

Not very technical write-up but still.. Congratulations with your choice. With a little bit of loving care you can setup yourself a really nice home with FreeBSD. I use Firefox by default.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Sep 6, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> vermaden, Please don't take offense at what I said. It was not directed at you. I have strong opinions about hardware freedom..



Well I'm not offended either, and I pump them up more than anybody. 

My Thinkpads all run like perpetual motion machines, are a pleasure to type on with more than enough resources for general desktop activity. And in the end, that's what counts where I'm sitting.

I run an Ethernet Lan and have only ever needed to change HDD, RAM and a battery. All readily available on ebay and a breeze to work on. I have a dead T61 that looked like it just came out of the box for parts should I need them. I'm more concerned with the Intel Management Engine than some whitelist.

I usually use my $50 T61's but have grown to like my T400 with Core2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40GHz and 8GB RAM. Gamers wouldn't have it, but I wouldn't have a gaming machine over my Thinkpads either, so it's all good.


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