# Firefox Nightly support?



## stratacast1 (Nov 17, 2017)

So I am on the fence about switching my desktop from Linux to FreeBSD. I have some things I'm looking into like getting FreeBSD to work with an Nvidia GTX 1070, but I really want to focus on getting Firefox Nightly to work in this thread, since that's my #1 browser. Looking at posts from 2015, I saw that the 32-bit version may work with the Linux compatibility layer. If I recall correctly, I see there is 64-bit support for that now too, correct? If that's true, could I then theoretically get Nightly to work? How would I do that? Do I just download the compat binaries and just execute the Nightly binary?


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 18, 2017)

Making it short, you would need to port it to run native. *Probably*, the port in the tree (www/firefox) should work most of the time (we are talking about nightly) with the minor necessary changes.

You could also ask the maintainer if he/she maintain a internal nightly port and if he/she could share. You could also help with testings etc.

You may want to take a look in the Porter's Handbook too.

I do not see why GTX 1070 would not work.


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## stratacast1 (Nov 18, 2017)

I'll look into that, thanks! It's a shame Mozilla doesn't make a FreeBSD binary, but you can't win them all I guess.

I'm mostly on the fence about getting my 1070 to work in part due to my inexperience on having FreeBSD as a desktop, but also I had some bad experiences getting a GT 610 to work properly a while ago (wretched performance with MATE and XFCE), but it is again, probably my lack of experience and not FreeBSD


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 18, 2017)

I have a GT 630 and it works quite fine. I guess you forgot to configure anything and it was loading with the VESA driver.

I had to put it in /boot/loader.conf to have the card properly working, but I do not remember what was not working. 

```
nvidia-modeset_load="YES"
nvidia_modeset_name="nvidia-modeset"
```


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## stratacast1 (Nov 18, 2017)

If I switch I will be sure to remember this post! I just noticed there's no nextcloud-client for FreeBSD, only owncloud-client. But the NC client is going to diverge soon so I have some tinkering before I make a switch. I think an NC client port would be easier to maintain than a Firefox Nightly port hehe


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 18, 2017)

I stopped using Nextcloud a few months ago because of some annoying issues with its client (what were always in there).

Nextcloud is made around www/sabredav, and so all syncing (including keeping track of them) is done by the client what does not do that very well.

I first tried Seafile (what seems to be very robust) because I just need the file sharing capabilities (I use www/davical for contacts and calendar), but get annoyed during the setup and give up.

The problem was I trying to make it work with PostgreSQL what is not officially supported yet. I was almost in there, probably would just need to set the python env, but it got ... annoying. So I end up using net/syncthing what is fitting perfect for my needs, and it syncs better than anything I had used. 

The perfect solution for me would be something like Seafile (or ever Nextcloud) but made around net/syncthing, like what seem (I never actually saw that thing running) to be the case of the Resillio (old net-p2p/btsync) Sync Home/Business.

Anyway, there are a lot people using www/nextcloud and so when a new client port be needed it should not take too long to someone port it.


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## stratacast1 (Nov 18, 2017)

I used syncthing for over a year before I switched to Nextcloud and really liked it. Still like it more for pure file syncing, so I have it set up for some use cases still. However, I started to use NC when Let's Encrypt became a thing and I take advantage of everything it offers and have quite a bit of family and friends on my server or their own so it makes working in that realm easier for sharing. That and photo sync with my iPhone. I also like that the upcoming clients will have end-to-end encryption available for files you choose. So with that, I can't compromise on my use of the Nextcloud client, but I will fight to see if I can get it to work on FreeBSD. I'm honestly surprised there isn't a port for the client now, but I guess there hasn't been a seeable need at this point since up until now the NC client is just the OC client with their skin.


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 18, 2017)

Nice to know they finally are adding the end-to-end encryption what is a long time requested feature and they always excused to implement that.


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## PacketMan (Nov 19, 2017)

lebarondemerde said:


> ...like what seem (I never actually saw that thing running) to be the case of the Resillio (old net-p2p/btsync) Sync Home/Business.



I use Resillio / BTsync and I really like it, and because its bittorrent based, the more nodes you have in your private cloud, the faster it seems to works.  It works pretty darn good not just on FreeBSD, but on various devices like Android based cell phones, tablets, etc.


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 19, 2017)

PacketMan

net/syncthing also is p2p-bittorrent based, works in the same way but it is open-sourced, while Resillio is not. I guess it was created on purpose to be an open-source alternative/replacement to Resillio.

What I would like to have is something like www/nextcloud or Seafile but p2p based. I mean something with a proper web interface where you can freely manage the data but built around net/syncthing. I think the Sync Home/Business of Resillio works like that.

Unfortunately, it is far from my capabilities to develop something like that.

EDIT:

"Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and _you_ deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it's transmitted over the Internet."


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## poorandunlucky (Nov 20, 2017)

Why Nightly?

Do you need that much help coding web apps?


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## stratacast1 (Nov 21, 2017)

I would love to see a merging of syncthing and Nextcloud. One thing I haven't liked about Nextcloud is how if there is a change in a file there is no delta accounted for and it sends the whole file all over again :/ syncthing handles deltas nicely.

Why Nightly? I just thoroughly enjoy testing new features for Mozilla. Nightly has been my main browser since it was version 36. There are also some things in Nightly that don't exist in stable. I'm not opposed to stable, especially now with Quantum finally releasing (been using some of its features for quite some time now in Nightly) and I like to think the crash reports and telemetry helps Mozilla out


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## poorandunlucky (Nov 21, 2017)

stratacast1 said:


> I would love to see a merging of syncthing and Nextcloud. One thing I haven't liked about Nextcloud is how if there is a change in a file there is no delta accounted for and it sends the whole file all over again :/ syncthing handles deltas nicely.
> 
> Why Nightly? I just thoroughly enjoy testing new features for Mozilla. Nightly has been my main browser since it was version 36. There are also some things in Nightly that don't exist in stable. I'm not opposed to stable, especially now with Quantum finally releasing (been using some of its features for quite some time now in Nightly) and I like to think the crash reports and telemetry helps Mozilla out



Well FreeBSD isn't exactly easy to use as an OS...  The slogan is "The power to serve!" but it might as well be "Make your own goddamn OS!".  It's a project and undertaking unto itself... it's really for people who are bored with a normal operating system and like to constantly fix and improve their computer... it's more like a pet, really, or a manual transmission box...


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## stratacast1 (Nov 22, 2017)

That's okay, I already have a few months experience having it power my server with jails running a bunch of different server software, pf firewall (and custom rules), mirrored zfs pools, all with cronjobbed tasks to scrub and replicate data to another FreeBSD computer that has an external HDD where backups are being replicated too. Coming soon: rotating backup drives for offsite backups and soon perhaps looking into Poudriere for building packages once on my machine. So "The power to serve!" is slowly coming under my belt, as I still have a lot to learn, I definitely lack desktop experience in it. And I want to use it as my desktop maybe with xfce and i3wm. Still exploring before I decommission my main box and have to figure out how I'm getting data on an XFS drive onto FreeBSD hehe.



poorandunlucky said:


> it's more like a pet, really, or a manual transmission box..



Much less than what I'm doing right now. Right now I have a high volume of updates on Fedora 26, and have occasional issues with SELinux and KDE Plasma causing troubles, all the price I pay for bleeding edge vs. stability. Which is why I want FreeBSD on my desktop. I've had to maintain FreeBSD MUCH less than when the same box had the same software (LXD instead of Jails to do system "containers"). Anymore, I just make sure there are no fires in the engine room, check for updates weekly and really only break out of that pattern to do security updates, which I usually compile from ports before the package hits pkg. I also compile my system updates monthly. So I really reboot maybe once a month to apply those updates, it was weekly to do security patches and kernel patches on Ubuntu 16.04. I know setups can take longer than Linux because it's so minimal from the start, but the story would about be the same if I installed from another minimal-out-of-the-box Linux distro. My job is to maintain a lot of servers from home and I've been wanting something that will be out of my way and be easy to handle a lot of terminals while also being reliable. And the FreeBSD community has proven to me that it is exactly that. Reliable and too awesome

PS: I like manual transmission boxes  Thank you for the friendly warning 


But yeah...I can slide on not having FF Nightly, I'd just prefer to have it, you know? But file syncing to Nextcloud is an absolute must. If the OC client becomes unusable with Nextcloud and there's no port for the new, upcoming client. I'd probably be willing to figure it out for others and myself


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## Deleted member 30996 (Nov 22, 2017)

stratacast1 said:


> So "The power to serve!" is slowly coming under my belt, as I still have a lot to learn, I definitely lack desktop experience in it. And I want to use it as my desktop maybe with xfce and i3wm. Still exploring before I decommission my main box and have to figure out how I'm getting data on an XFS drive onto FreeBSD hehe.



It's difficult now because you and poorandunlucky are still learning about FreeBSD, exploring and experimenting with this and that, encountering and solving problems as you go.

Bravo. It is a major undertaking.

Once you "settle in", find programs and a configuration that works for you I believe you're going to find there is very little work maintaining it.

I run:
`portsnap fetch update
pkg audit -F
freebsd-update fetch`

on a daily basis and address vulnerabilities or updates as needed. But other than that it could be weeks before I have to do routine maintenance on my laptops and they are, IMO, very easy to maintain.


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## stratacast1 (Nov 22, 2017)

Trihexagonal said:


> It's difficult now because you and poorandunlucky are still learning about FreeBSD, exploring and experimenting with this and that, encountering and solving problems as you go.



There really is a lot of that right now. Especially since I'll be dealing with xorg and nvidia...which I have learned to hate anywhere. I expect to have my computer down for a day to learn uncharted territories and setting up what I need. I'm happy FreeBSD has everything I need for software

I like how FreeBSD does updates. Easy to compile them yourself or fetch precompiled binaries and how pkg still works well with code compiled from ports. I compiled Darktable on Fedora and the package manager has no clue it's even there. pkg audit is awesome and how you can see it in your mail reports. And separating system and application updates too. Would be good for some other servers I wish I could switch to FreeBSD, but I'm not allowed hehe


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