# firefox is not unix, it is something horrible



## hruodr (Jun 19, 2022)

Do you agree?

If you find with google a pdf file, you cannot get the URL, because it downloads the file and presents a local URL to the downloaded file. In particular, you cannot do a bookmark to the original URL.

Copy with mouse key1 in the results of google and trying to paste with key 2 bring troubles.

It is highly configurable, one can configure a lot of stupidities, but it is from time to time unusable.

Well, a lot of strange things, in some way strange for a unix user with simple X11 with twm.


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## Phishfry (Jun 19, 2022)

What bothers me is this:
/usr/home/xorg/.mozilla/firefox/lfk8tlhm.default-release/storage/ls-archive.sqlite

That shit makes cookies.txt look quaint.
My browser needs a database?
I thought I said no cookies?


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## hruodr (Jun 19, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> My browser needs a database?



No, many databases:


```
# ll *sqlite*
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x    950272 Jun 14 11:49 content-prefs.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x   2097152 Jun 19 20:24 cookies.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x    787040 Jun 19 20:50 cookies.sqlite-wal
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x  45514752 Jun 19 19:56 favicons.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x   2065928 Jun 19 20:50 favicons.sqlite-wal
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x    851968 Jun 19 20:00 formhistory.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x    229376 Jun 19 20:45 permissions.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x  36700160 Jun 19 20:45 places.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x   4096000 Jun 19 20:50 places.sqlite-wal
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x     65536 Jun 19 18:52 protections.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x    274944 Jun 19 15:29 storage.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 x  x  67600384 Jun 19 20:50 webappsstore.sqlite
```


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## 6502 (Jun 19, 2022)

I can say "Web browser is something horrible".


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## Phishfry (Jun 19, 2022)

hruodr said:


> you cannot do a bookmark to the original URL.


And to get the original PDF URL you must scrape it out of the downloaded files box. Copy Download Link.
OOB it is worse with Firefox trying to open pdf instead of save. Got to jiggle the MIME settings.


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## ayleid96 (Jun 20, 2022)

Modern browsers are horrible, modern operating systems without internet browsers are almost useless, we have to stick with what we have.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 20, 2022)

You use "unix" as an adjective in the title. Can you define it?

And: Firefox has a market share that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, in percent. Where does development funding for it come from? I don't know. Supposedly the development is controlled or organized by the Mozilla Foundation. Their total budget is about $25M per year, but according to their tax return, none of that is spend on software engineering for Firefox (instead it is used for "agenda setting, movement building, and leadership development"). The first $1.5M go into paying executives, plus another executive who gets $2.5M from an "associated for-profit organization". So perhaps Firefox development is all volunteers? In that case, what you describe (which I would call "bugs" or "horrible UI design") are just the state of the art.


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## Profighost (Jun 20, 2022)

I came from Lynx -> ie (couple of months) -> Netscape (several years) -> Opera (few years) -> Firefox (last >20y)
I'm also not really fully satisfied with Firefox. The list why would be long.
Firefox is one of the programs I try not to update as long as possible. (Which new-version-frequency are they at the moment btw? A new version every twelve minutes? There is nothing they may add I wish for, but only high chances that something is worsened or at least my settings are gone - again (I _hate_ that!)

I tried Vivaldi a while, but was also not satisfied.

It's the same I see in several Linux distries: They copy what the knew, and try to make it better. 
That's wrong by the idea. There is no need to copy something that's rubbish from the start.
As the world needs no 5th Windows-clone nobody actually needs the 7th ie-clone.
Think it new from the very  start!
That would be my advice.

Major point in my eyes: 
You may get a buttload of add ons and crap you may_ add_. 
But the things I want to have modular, especially to _remove_ them, are built in fixed. Hardly to impossible to change.

Gimme a list of features a software has, and a red marker: You'll be amazed nothing much stay left:
"Don't need this, don't need that, don't want this, must not have that, useless, don't need it, let me alone with that, does this have any useful purpose .... drop, drop, drop, drop... gone, gone, gone...."

Maybe that's modular thing one may define as unix as an adjective, correspodending to unix philosophie.
And my personal philosophy can be fulfilled by Unix-Philosophy: 
Only add thing you really need and use. 
Or as Einstein put it: As simple as possible, as complex as necassary.
Or as I would say: Instead of drowning an already trashed system with more and more useless crap get ridd off the rubbish! 

I checked out, there is a very long list of Webbrowsers, and it's getting bigger.
We are not the only ones dissatisfied. 

So* maybe a thread* would be useful, to list and discuss *which browsers there are*, /natively running under FreeBSD, of course, what features ("has an adress bar and speed dials by default"), no-features ("does not include automatic searches in adrees bar", "excludes google"... ) ...


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> You use "unix" as an adjective in the title. Can you define it?


Profighost answered it. It is the style of unix, bsd, linux, of all that software created for these OS, including X11.
Firefox is a dissonant note there.



Profighost said:


> So* maybe a thread* would be useful, to list and discuss *which browsers there are*, /natively running under FreeBSD, of course, what features ("has an adress bar and speed dials by default"), no-features ("does not include automatic searches in adrees bar", "excludes google"... ) ...



Unfortunately one must use one of the most used browsers, because for that browsers are written the
web pages. But perhaps a derivative that makes it unixer, the same render engine, the same javascript??


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2022)

6502 said:


> I can say "Web browser is something horrible".


No, the www was definitively a good idea, but it degenerated due to many reasons, and it cannot be
substituted with something better, because the decision is made by those that offer web sites, not by
the user of them. It is a case where the market economy does not work, cannot work.


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## VladiBG (Jun 20, 2022)

Regarding the links in the google search it's not the Firefox issue it's how google mask the result after first click on the link.








						URL Clean
					

Tidy links copied from Google search results




					urlclean.com


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## shkhln (Jun 20, 2022)

hruodr said:


> the style of unix, … including X11.


FYI, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better.


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2022)

shkhln said:


> FYI, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better.


I read the article long ago and can only recommend it:



			Worse Is Better
		


But I do not agree 100% with the conclusions, because all is a question of consideration on the particular case,
I like both styles, I like C, I like LISP (or scripting languages), and all of them are unix enough.


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2022)

VladiBG said:


> Regarding the links in the google search it's not the Firefox issue it's how google mask the result after first click on the link.


Not completely. If one opens the link, on the URL field normal appears the clean link to which google
redirects, not a link to a local file, the exception is with links to a pdf file.


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## VladiBG (Jun 20, 2022)

This is how google track the link hits before redirect you to the actual page.


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## hruodr (Jun 20, 2022)

VladiBG said:


> This is how google track the link hits before redirect you to the actual page.


Google definitively does not link to a local page in my computer. BTW, chrome does not have this problem.


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## VladiBG (Jun 20, 2022)

I'm talking about search results in google, not the local files or pages on your local computer.


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## jbo (Jun 20, 2022)

Profighost said:


> Firefox is one of the programs I try not to update as long as possible.








						Mozilla Firefox : CVE security vulnerabilities, versions and detailed reports
					

Mozilla Firefox security vulnerabilities, exploits, metasploit modules, vulnerability statistics and list of versions



					www.cvedetails.com


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## CuatroTorres (Jun 20, 2022)

Mozilla Firefox is about Internet freedom, security, and privacy, not technical excellence. Perhaps it should be discussed if it fulfills what was promised or if there are better options.









						The Mozilla Manifesto
					

These are the principles that guide our mission to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the web.




					www.mozilla.org
				




Not always but the closed development business model:









						Apple may have to pay $1bn to Brits in iPhone Batterygate
					

Lawsuit took its time, just like your older iOS handset




					www.theregister.com


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## mer (Jun 20, 2022)

At it's core, what is a browsers main job?  Render a markup language into something "pretty" for the user.
Just like at it's core email is text.
Both have been corrupted into "more" simply because some wanted something they thought was better.

Go back in time to when most people were still on dialup Internet access.  That was rough for browsers because the people creating the content were testing it on corporate LANs running at 100MB so all the autoplay videos, Flash, Shockwave dynamic stuff would cause pages to take minutes to load.

Now all that is automatically supported, often a path for security holes (amazing how many get listed for Chrome/Chromium, Firefox on daily basis), as others have said, all that has become the expectation.  We've let ourselves be dumbed down because it's easier.


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## CuatroTorres (Jun 20, 2022)

mer said:


> At it's core, what is a browsers main job?  Render a markup language into something "pretty" for the user.
> Just like at it's core email is text.
> Both have been corrupted into "more" simply because some wanted something they thought was better.



I am delighted to be able to carry out institutional procedures from the comfort of my sofa, without traveling kilometers and waiting in lines of people for hours. You are not?


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## mer (Jun 20, 2022)

CuatroTorres said:


> I am delighted to be able to carry out institutional procedures from the comfort of my sofa, without traveling kilometers and waiting in lines of people for hours. You are not?


Of course I am but I don't have a clue as to how that relates to what you quoted.

Banking application:  what is the primary requirement?  Allow you to perform banking from the comfort of your sofa, securely.  How do you do that?  Create markup language forms that are easy to use and secure to allow someone do do what they need like transfer money between accounts, pay bills.  
Pretty generic requirements.
Why do people wind up complaining about their bank requiring specific platforms, specific browsers, specific "utilities" like JavaScript in order to use the application?
Do you absolutely need all those things in order to create a functional secure banking application?  I'd say probably not.


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## 6502 (Jun 20, 2022)

IMO, it is time for re-organization of the Web and make new browsers fast and light. I don't know how improved is HTML5 and have to see it in details. JavaScript is the other (or the major) problem.


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

Firefox began as a Windows application (edit: for most users) (Firefox also wasn't called Firefox originally: *Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox*), it was never designed around *nix paradigms.  Mozilla have made some dreadful design choices and they are horrendously woke which leads them to focus on anything but software (or reality e.g. what users actually want).


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## SirDice (Jun 20, 2022)

It was originally called "Mozilla". 

www/mozilla
www/linux-mozilla

And, no. It didn't began life as a "Windows" application.


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

*"Phoenix is not your father's Mozilla browser."*


			Phoenix 0.1 (Pescadero) release Notes and FAQ
		

Slight correction, it was released for Linux at the same time.

I began using it when it was Phoenix 0.3 on Windows.


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## D-FENS (Jun 20, 2022)

hruodr said:


> Do you agree?
> 
> If you find with google a pdf file, you cannot get the URL, because it downloads the file and presents a local URL to the downloaded file. In particular, you cannot do a bookmark to the original URL.
> 
> ...


In my opinion your critique relates not to Firefox but to Google. It is the web application that defines this behavior.

My own opinion to Firefox: In general, a good browser.
However, its default security settings are horrible and in general it is very hard to configure your browser to be secure and private.
Firefox took the direction of cloudification and data snooping, like many other apps. In my opinion this was a turn for the worse.


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## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2022)

tux2bsd said:


> *"Phoenix is not your father's Mozilla browser."*
> 
> 
> Phoenix 0.1 (Pescadero) release Notes and FAQ
> ...


From that same link:


> Phoenix is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component
> [...]
> 
> Phoenix utilizes large hunks of Mozilla code. Many of the problems you may experience in Phoenix are actually problems in this Mozilla core code. If you find a problem with page content or connectivity then it is probably a Mozilla problem and should be reported to the Browser product in Bugzilla and not to the Phoenix product.


So really it was only the UI parts that were replaced with XUL. It is still very much the classic Mozilla codebase (for better or worse). Itself a branch of ye olde' Netscape Communicator.


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

FreeBSD isn't FreeBSD then...


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## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2022)

tux2bsd said:


> FreeBSD isn't FreeBSD then, by your guys logic...


Of course it is. Just because it evolved from existing software many years ago, doesn't mean it can't become something different in time. But ultimately it rarely can get away from its legacy 4.4BSD-Lite (aka "the last UNIX that Berkely put out").

It will always have some remnants in its codebase, just like Firefox does today; no matter how many different names they give it.


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

4.3BSD-Lite, since you're splitting hairs.


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## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2022)

tux2bsd said:


> 4.3BSD-Lite, since you're splitting hairs.


I don't believe that is the case:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/design-44bsd/



> A few variants of 4.4BSD, such as FreeBSD, allow filesystems [...]



I believe NetBSD in its early days was based on 4.3BSD-Lite pre-1.x but then pulled in 4.4BSD-Lite modifications.

https://people.allbsd.org/~hrs/NetBSD/guide/en/chap-intro.html


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

"The first CDROM (and general net-wide) distribution was FreeBSD 1.0, released in December of 1993. This was based on the 4.3BSD-Lite" https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/3.3-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/handbook/history.html


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## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2022)

tux2bsd said:


> This was based on the 4.3BSD-Lite" https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/3.3-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/handbook/history.html


From that same link:



> FreeBSD then set about the arduous task of literally re-inventing itself from a completely new and rather incomplete set of 4.4BSD-Lite bits.


FreeBSD dumped the 4.3BSD-lite codebase and started again from scratch with 4.4BSD-lite. I believe it had to because 4.3 was still encumbered.


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> FreeBSD dumped the 4.3BSD codebase and started again from scratch with 4.4BSD


But that isn't the farthest back origin story, which is what you lot are quibbling over (re Mozilla/Firefox etc because it has to be pointed out other wise you won't realise...).


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## tux2bsd (Jun 20, 2022)

The actual point is hruodr (OP) is confusing the *nix approach with an application that is able to run on top of various *nix OSes.

Firefox used to be very lean, but Mozilla (the organisation) twisted it into yet another bloated misguided monstrosity (exponentially worse with woke presence over time).


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## 6502 (Jun 20, 2022)

Firefox is bad but I am not sure that Chrome is better. I am not impressed by Google works.


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## SirDice (Jun 20, 2022)

tux2bsd said:


> Firefox used to be very lean,


HTML 1.0 wasn't as advanced as HTML 5.0 either. What's your point?


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## CuatroTorres (Jun 20, 2022)

SirDice said:


> HTML 1.0 wasn't as advanced as HTML 5.0 either. What's your point?


Nostalgia for times past that were better?


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## SirDice (Jun 20, 2022)

My first internet experience was with HTML 1, no frames, no tables, no javascript. Webpages were mostly text with the occasional picture. Obviously the browser (engine) used to be a lot simpler back then too. As the technology progressed over the years the web browser engines had to do a lot more too.


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## Menelkir (Jun 20, 2022)

SirDice said:


> My first internet experience was with HTML 1, no frames, no tables, no javascript. Webpages were mostly text with the occasional picture. Obviously the browser (engine) used to be a lot simpler back then too. As the technology progressed over the years the web browser engines had to do a lot more too.


Remember when frames used to be a bad thing? I personally want all of my frames back. I would accept the midi playing too.


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## SirDice (Jun 20, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> Remember when frames used to be a bad thing?


I do remember them being added, because the AMosaic browser (on the Amiga) I used at that time didn't support them (still doesn't I believe).


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## Menelkir (Jun 20, 2022)

SirDice said:


> I do remember them being added, because the AMosaic browser (on the Amiga) I used at that time didn't support them (still doesn't I believe).


AMosaic no, but now you can use IBrowse.


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## Deleted member 67862 (Jun 20, 2022)

I would gladly use anything else (not Google) if the adblocking in other browsers was as good as having uBlock Origin on Firefox.

Actually, I would use www/links for everything if I could.


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## sidetone (Jun 20, 2022)

The good thing about Firefox, is the Mozilla licenses, which are stewarded by them for use for other code by any author, not only for their browser and other Internet applications. Mozilla isn't a viral license, the terms go to the files, and not beyond the directory, like GPL's do. It has similarities to Apache License 2.0. The only reason they can't be used with GPL, except for far separated linking, is because of differences in patent protection. They can be used with GPL if they're dual licensed by the authors.

Firefox can be used to make something better, without the things not liked from it. There may have been a few projects, but unfortunately, it needs expertise and manpower. IIRC, Palemoon was one, but they wanted to make their dependencies centered on theirs rather than common dependencies. That and the way their developers responded wasn't going to work. Malepoon sounded like innuendo. Aside from those, there might be a viable suite based on Firefox and Thunderbird code.

I use Firefox, because of its layout and features. I tried other ones. I'm glad Firefox and Thunderbird moved to Meson for a compiler, than requiring LLVM/Clang and Rust to be reinstalled for every nightly build.


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## Profighost (Jun 20, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> Mozilla Firefox : CVE security vulnerabilities, versions and detailed reports
> 
> 
> Mozilla Firefox security vulnerabilities, exploits, metasploit modules, vulnerability statistics and list of versions
> ...


I am fully aware of that.

One of my next points on my to-do-list is to set up firefox run in a jail (or any other browser - my trust in webbrowsers (resp. webpages) is limited, anyway.) 
As far as I understand jail yet, possible security issues will stay in jail.
With cookies and fingerprints one may open pandora's box and ask what security exactly means. (No, we don't do it. At least not here in this thread! [SirDice will ban me one day ])

Don't tell me, firefox (resp. mozilla) were a 100% non-profit orga, which allows their browser to be set actually the way you may surf the net completely anonymously.  
If you followed some interesting articles published about that topic you may get to the conclusion, cookies are from yesterday. Fingerprints is the stuff.
If webpages tell me their cooky-acceptance-bs I always think of a guy rummaging your underpants drawer saying:"We respect your privacy!" 

BTW: Firefox ["secretly"] has an experimental option, to suppress fingerprinting. 
But if it works - who knows? How one may test, if you don't have access to a webserver? Go to youporn and see if you receive more viagra ads?  

I do have nothing against updates and patches. Those fix bugs and ensure security - but shall (must) not change the usage of the program.
But most software companies wildely mix those up with upgrades. Upgrades change the usage of a program.
The first is OK.
The second_ I _want to decide, if and when.

Let me draw you a picture:
Lets assume your computer/desktop/os/browser were your car.

What you want is bugs in the ABS software fixed, the software of the gas injection system to be updated to reduce fuel consumption, newest maps installed to the GPS, and so on. 
That's OK. 
Those are updates and patches. 
Welcome (don't bother me with OK-only-requesters, just do it! Automatically, quiet in  the background.)
What you don't need, but also sometimes get, is an upgrade of windscreen wiper software. 
The wiper still not wipes better, but, well OK, it also not wipes worse, so what the heck. 
Some trainee also needs to share the feeling of beeing part of big software releases. 
But if it wipes worse, I'm pissed. I neither see no progress, nor any benefit for me in it.
So I want the old version back, because that one wiped better.
Understandable, is it?

But what I absolutely don't want, never ever, is to get in my car in the morning, reading "an important security update has been installed",
and your steering wheel is gone. 
Therefore there are two levers on both sides of the seat. 
"wtf!?!..." -  "Yeah! It's cool! It's new! It's better." 
I don't care! 
It doesn't matter if it's better or worse. 
It's a change. 
A _sudden_ change. 
An unasked change!
Besides you fell mocked, since this ain't no "security update", this is a system's _upgrade_, you're faced to be forced to use and learn it, _now_.

I neither asked for, nor was I asked, if I wanted it, and especially not, if I'm _now_ ready, willing and able to learn, test and decide if I wants it.
_Now_ I simply have neither the time, nor the nerve, nor the will to stay additionally 5, 10...20 minutes in the garage, being forced to bother with something unexpected new.
Now I need to drive to work.
Just as I did for years, without accidents, with my old-school, back-woods, ancient onehundredandtwenty years old, boring round steering wheel, way back from the stone-ages of steam-engine driven vehicles.
I don't give a..., what others think it's cool. 
It simply just worked perfectly for me. 
That's all I asked for. That's what I had. 
Don't take this away from me without I having a decision!

There is no need to change things just because they are "old".
There _may_ a reason to change, _if_ things are better.
But new does not necessarily means better.
Something many software guys simply don't get.
Of course, I understand that. They spent hundreds and thousands of hours slaving over that new feature, and now it has to be brought into the world.
But also software engineers have to learn two things:
1. There are "ignorant customers, too stupid to see the greatness of their fantastic ideas". They don't want it. They may not really need it. They even may _dislike_ it.
2. Not all of their ideas are great. Some actually may be pure bs, really.
Sorry, but that means: "Welcome to the real world." Deal with it!
Other engineers also do.

Maybe it's better.
Maybe it's not.
Sometimes it's simply another style, better for some, but no improvement to all.
But _*I *_want to decide when I test it. 
And _*I *_want to decide when I change to it - _*if*_ I change.
I don't like to be forced.
On _my machine_ (I payed for it) I decide.
If I do `sudo rm -Rf /` on my machine, pour beer in it, or throw it out of the windows, than it's my responsiblity, because it's my machine, and also no software guys buys me a new machine, when they made a mess neither.
my responsibility = my decision.
I want no some pimple-faced tie-holder nerd from marketing decides for me because they just were in some sudden mood.

Therefore at least:
*- distinguish between patches, updates and upgrades, please*
- please let me decide, when I install what
- give my a chance to fall back again ("downgrade"), switch it off, remove it

FreeBSD is exemplary in this point, because you may fall back, if you like.
One may discuss, if it's useful or secure - but I have a chance to decide.

Some things are not old. 
They are _established_. 
Because they've proven their good usage.
Such as to make an OS like unix and follow the unix philosophy. 
Not just because it's established ("old"), but because it's established because it's proven best (so far) 

*Fact is:* 
The reason why I update, if I update Firefox is webpages not working anymore.
Because the pure idea of an update alone already gives me the willies!
(I'm simply impaired by lots of bad experiences on MS Windows - and Firefox.)

I never had any security issues with Firefox, yet. (At least none I'm aware of.)
Even if I'm not running always the very recent version.

But I had countless nuiances because of so called "updates":
Startpage's set to Google (formerly) or (nowadays) to "Firefox-News'n'Facebook-crap-startpage" again.
I neither want both! I want my speedials being startpage on any new tab, especially the startpage!
Update: speed-dials killed, again. 
Again "Welcome to Firefox-BS" (I use Firefox since ver. 6), URl-bar collapsed - again (maybe some upgrade will remove it completely some day? - who knows?), menus also collapsed, again...... and, and, and, shit, shit, shit, again and again!
I want the menu bar be appeared, always, no exception. Every update I have to switch it on again, cause I use it.
I want to have a adress bar, always. Every update I have to switch it open again.
I am an so old fashioned fart, when I know the address I actually, really type it in directly, or - believe it or not - I really, actually use bookmarks! 
Yes, I do. I do not google everything always everytime I need it again. (old fashioned idiot, maybe. But I feel the other way is highly inefficient [and costs lots of energy!])
So, switch on that  f#c41n adress bar! Again.
No, I neither need nor want any websearches start everytime immediatly at the very first letter I type in there! Especially not on Google.com!!
You may imagine my great joy, when the new, great, cool feature appeared several years ago, so you cannot completely switch off the adress-bar search in the normal settings anymore (formerly you could). Now, you only may decide if you have an extra, additional search bar, but still the adressbar still starts searches....   
Greatest invention of humankind since the leaf blower! 
And I've given up hope, that will ever come back again.

I use Firefox since ver. 6. (six-point-, unary.)
Now we're at 101.something.something (or something above, already? maybe .0.0.0.1.0-1a? )
I have been grown my browser with me (a real bookmarks-tree, speeddials, settings, even a theme(!)...)
For many years I draw a textfile with all _my about:config_-variables.
With every update I still have to set them all back by hand, again, the way I want them to be, such as "don't close the whole business, just because I closed last tab..."
(formerly this was default)

_*Every second or third (...who knows?) Firefox "update" cost me at least half an hour*_, 
only to reset all the shit the way I wants it to be (download and install not included.This comes extra.)  
I  _H A T E  _THAT!!
You may understand, that I do not want to do that _every couple of days_, or how often new versions appear, that jumble all your settings,
but try to stay with a version at least for 3...4 months?!
Either you spent a significant amount of time upgrading, or you just stay with the default, as others decided what they think what's best for most.

I daresay, I have better things to do, than to adjust all settings for every update for all my software every couple of days.
(One of the main reasons I ran away from Windows; 
"The system needs to be restarted!" 
"What? Now? No!!" 
ten minutes later:"The system needs to be restarted" 
....
at least every 3rd day!! 
And with Windows you give up quickly to have any own setting at all, and just stay with the (crappy-bs) default.
(Maybe nowadays this may be different. I don't checked, because I stopped caring with XP, and completely dropped this rubbish after 7.)
Absolutely no go!)

Patches and updates are necessary, of course, no question there.
But I have my computer to do things with it, not to react on requesters and to do upgrades.
I simply insist on I am the master over my slave the machine.
I don't let me be slaved by any machine. 
The question is:
Is this still my machine then?

The reason why I still stay with Firefox is, the others are even worse.
At least the ones I've checked, so far, yet.
Every now and then I'll check, if there are alternatives.
Last thing I saw a couple of weeks ago was:
 Wow! There are several new browsers on the market (seems I'm not the only one dissatisfied with Firefox  
...but to check them all out.. 
...maybe I could start with a pre-chosen selection.

So, seriously, *what are real alternatives to Firefox* (on FreeBSD, of course)?


P.S.: Sorry for this long post. 
P.P.S.: *Thanks* for reading (if reading it til here , if not, also thanks!)
P.P.P.S.: Sorry, for the many curse words. But this topic pi... - fusses me


----------



## RoGeorge (Jun 20, 2022)

hruodr said:


> If you find with google a pdf file, you cannot get the URL, because it downloads the file and presents a local URL to the downloaded file. In particular, you cannot do a bookmark to the original URL.


Not sure if I understood the complaint, but that has nothing to do with Firefox, that's from Google search.  There are Firefox extensions that can "degooglify" the search results links.  I'm not sure which one does that for my Firefox, I assume it's either "uBlock Origin" or maibe "Enhancer for Youtube".

If you search for "degooglify" in the Firefox's extensions repository, there will be many extensions that can clean the search results links, so they can be bookmarked with their original URL.


----------



## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 20, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> And: Firefox has a market share that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, in percent. Where does development funding for it come from? I don't know.


Actually quite easy: 90% of its revenue comes from Google. Google is paying Mozilla Inc. since over a decade tons of money so that Firefox ships with Google as default search engine. The yearly paid amount is in the 400 - 450 million US$ range at the moment.









						Google Is Paying Mozilla $450M Per Year To Be The Default Search Engine On Firefox
					

Mozilla laid off around a quarter of its staff earlier this week. Now, the company has signed a new deal with Google, which keeps Google as the default




					www.androidheadlines.com
				




This deal is to be renegotiated in 2023, and since Firefox market share is in decline many people suspect that Google will pay actually much less money from then on.

For me the problem is this: the first iteration of the Mozilla browser was a big flop. I am really talking about Mozilla, NOT Mozilla Firefox. Released in 2004 after way too long development time it was a big, slow fat thing nobody liked. Internet Explorer was king back then.

Firefox then was the radical rework of that, which really was able in the long term to become number one of the browsers back then for some years.

When Apple created Safari for Mac, they looked 2003 for open source browser engines. They considered Firefox engine (I guess it was Gecko back then) as too complex and heavyweight. So instead they found the KDE project, which already back then had its own rendering engine called KTHML, and adopted it. Apple just renamed it into Webcore, later Webkit. So KHTML became the base of Safari and later the web browser on the iPhone.

When Google announced Chrome, it also used Webkit right from the beginning. Since Webkit is led by Apple, Google later forked it and called its own for Blink.

For me Firefox lost its way around version 4, when they started to copy Chrome and rebased their development schedule on the same 6 weeks cycle Google has. Also the management in the last few years really seems to be too much concerned about nonsense features like Mozilla VPN, Colorways and whatnot instead of focusing to deliver a streamlined browser. And firing the Rust people was not the wisest move ever, nor the MDN people. Also Servo was expelled. For me Mozilla nowadays hass too little engineers to do anything good any longer, and is too obsessed instead with pulling one bullshit marketing stunt after the other nobody really cares about.

Firefox was something unique in the past, but nowadays is a bad Chrome copycat wannabee who is unable to really compete with Chrome. And that's why it is so much on the decline.

The other reason is that under iOS users have no choice but to use Webkit, since Apple does not allow the installation of other rendering engines at all. And under Android Blink is the default engine shipped with the OS, and Chrome does its job nicely so most don't have any reason to install Firefox at all.

The future is at the moment a Google dominated web, and the tool for that is Blink. I mean even Microsoft was not able to establish a new browser on the market against Google. Now Edge is using Blink.









						Here's Why Firefox is Seeing a Continuous Decline for Last 12 Years - It's FOSS News
					

Firefox is witnessing a decline in its userbase for the past 12 years. Dan expresses his views on the 'why'.




					news.itsfoss.com


----------



## ziomario (Jun 20, 2022)

You could try to make a pure imaginative speech, trying to come up with something better that could be used instead of a browser. Its easy to find bad sides in something,more difficult is to try to imagine something that works better.


----------



## SirDice (Jun 20, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> AMosaic no, but now you can use IBrowse.


Bugger. That made me realize I was on the internet _before_ IBrowse was first released in 1996. And that happened even before Google existed (Google search first launched in 1997). I'm so frigging old school, I'm pre-Google! I also distinctly remember using Google search for the first time. It was amazing.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 20, 2022)

Yeah, I remember when I made that switch from DEC's Altavista to Google. And also using Babelfish as language translation service, ah the good old days...

On topic: there's a whole array of niche web browsers, mostly build to be used with tiling window managers on mind. So they are mostly keyboard driven, not menu driven and have a very minimalistic UI.

Nyxt for example could be such a thing, which might fit that gap some people are feeling. There are also others around, some already dead, like uzbl (which is dead and claims to be following the Unix philosophy), Luakit or qutebrowser.





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVteSEjKytw




_


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## Menelkir (Jun 20, 2022)

SirDice said:


> I also distinctly remember using Google search for the first time. It was amazing.





hardworkingnewbie said:


> I remember when I made that switch from DEC's Altavista to Google.


I was about to say that. My first search engine was Yahoo and then Altavista.
I've used babelfish to translate non-english websites because I've used to search for music tabs and scores.


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## Criosphinx (Jun 20, 2022)

The search engines I used were Infoseek, Lycos, Excite and Yahoo because those were in the startup page of the browser (don't remember which one)

First time I heard about FreeBSD probably browsing with Netscape Navigator Gold.


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## Phishfry (Jun 20, 2022)

I am so old my TC/IP stack came on a floppy.








						In the early days of the Internet and Microsoft Windows 3.11, what were two components that needed to be installed before Windows could access the Internet using TCP/IP?
					

In the early days of the Internet and Microsoft Windows 3.11, what were two components that needed to be installed before Windows could access the In




					quiz.techlanda.com


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## hbsd (Jun 20, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> Nyxt for example could be such a thing


Hi, I've tested Nyxt. It's cool! But I think using these weird browsers is completely dangerous and wrong. The problem with most browsers is that they don't pay too much attention to security issues. I never use a browser other than Firefox and Chromium for web browsing. The browsers you and other users mentioned in this post have a long way to compete with something like Firefox.


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## Phishfry (Jun 20, 2022)

hbsd said:


> The browsers you and other users mentioned in this post have a long way to compete with something like Firefox.


Yes but how big is the Moz foundation budget. Huge compared to any competitors.
So can you compare any real open source browser project against that backdrop.
Large Google hush/antitrust funds versus multiple small projects like www/surf?
I use www/otter-browser as a backup. Do I trust webkit? Not really.

Problem is some people want minimal browser and some want Widevine and VR.
I want minimal browser that works at 99% of sites. Not 90% like Otter.
Screw browser DRM. Junky content that rots your mind.
You should need a Netfix app for this if they want to serve DRM. To let a cabal rule browser DRM is absurd.
Why would my browser even answer anything about my location.
I can't imagine what kind of audio eavesdropping is possible with modern browsers.
Too much feature creep.
Remember that setting that is No Popups?
Now tell me you get no popups. Ever. You have to literally turn off JS.
We have regressed in what we allow.


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## Menelkir (Jun 20, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> I am so old my TC/IP stack came on a floppy.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ugh, I still hate Trumpet Winsock.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 21, 2022)

hbsd said:


> Hi, I've tested Nyxt. It's cool! But I think using these weird browsers is completely dangerous and wrong. The problem with most browsers is that they don't pay too much attention to security issues. I never use a browser other than Firefox and Chromium for web browsing. The browsers you and other users mentioned in this post have a long way to compete with something like Firefox.


I have got a different view: the most important part for security is the HTML rendering engine and Javascript implementation. Browsers like Nyst don't have their own homebrew stuff for that, they are using standard engines being used elsewhere as well. So this really makes it for me mostly a non issue, because whatever upstream gets, will go into the engine as well.


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## hruodr (Jun 21, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> Not sure if I understood the complaint, but


No but. You did not understand. You are not the fist that did not understand. And I explained it before without success. See here:









						firefox is not unix, it is something horrible
					

Do you agree?  If you find with google a pdf file, you cannot get the URL, because it downloads the file and presents a local URL to the downloaded file. In particular, you cannot do a bookmark to the original URL.  Copy with mouse key1 in the results of google and trying to paste with key 2...




					forums.FreeBSD.org


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## CuatroTorres (Jun 21, 2022)

After all, the bottom line is that some of us have used 5 1/4" drives, even 8" and further back, and started on the internet with Webcrawler, Lycos, and Altavista/Yahoo. Anyone in middle age is in that stretch. The thread was approached more as a personal complaint than looking for a solution. Take a blossom tea and sleep.
I wonder if the browser engine is no longer so important in the multi-device era and if it is essential to unify it, given that the business focus to strangle is elsewhere.


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## Profighost (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> I'm so frigging old school, I'm pre-Google! I also distinctly remember using Google search for the first time. It was amazing.


Me too. 
But I didn't found Google amazing. Because since then I used Altavista and was happy satisfied with it.
Because Altavista did what a search engine shall do: find _me_ things - information, PDFs, Datasheets, books... etc
At university I found a lot of stuff for my study.
This was all over suddenly when Google appeared.  
Google came, everybody was using it exclusevely, also because media brought it up as the first search engine there is, Altavista was useless within a few months and died after a couple of years aftrerwards.

Google don't find you things. Google shows you things what others pay for they want you to see.
(Ever tried to just hit the keyboard randomly on google.com? 
You'll _always_ get several sites, especially ebay, selling you
"wqraiojukpufwertfipogjubpikjbwnrtghkiojpknrtgbh" )
Sorry, but frankly, to me this is crap!

Additionally most people believe with Google they search the internet. 
Google doesn't search the internet for you.
If you are e.g. in germany, it seaches germany, maybe german language sites from Austria and switzerland, but that's it.
In theory this is ment to be customerfriendly, because in most cases people actually search only locally.
But in fact this narrows the internet. 
The more Google knows about you, the smaller your world becomes.

This would not be a real problem, if
a) Google would give you the chance to search e.g. in Australia or worldwide (even if a search request may last some seconds [old-schoolers may remember])
b) Google would allow other search engines besides metacrawlers searching on Google, only.


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## 6502 (Jun 21, 2022)

Unfortunately, Google search is very "optimized", censored, etc. For example, old pages go to bottom and you find mostly new content. Regional search is the other bad extra. Search method was much better 15 years ago. Altavista was good with one big minus - it loaded 50-100K content on its search (1st) page and Google did exactly the opposite (only box with Search button and title). Not sure whether Altavista was blind to understand why they are losing marketshare or there was negotiation between owners.


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## tux2bsd (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> tux2bsd said:
> 
> 
> > Firefox used to be very lean,
> ...


As disingenuous as ever, SirDice.


tux2bsd said:


> Firefox used to be very lean, but Mozilla (the organisation) twisted it into yet another bloated misguided monstrosity (exponentially worse with woke presence over time).


It used to be very lean, it could still be very lean (and modern...) but they keep adding and changing shit no one, outside of Mozilla, asks for.


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## 6502 (Jun 21, 2022)

Firefox version numbering become very stupid with this 80...90,91...100. It seems at high level they have inappropriate manager and this is only one of his/her "ideas".


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## tux2bsd (Jun 21, 2022)

6502 said:


> Firefox version numbering become very stupid with this 80...90,91...100. It seems at high level they have inappropriate manager and this is only one of his/her "ideas".


YYYYMMDD that's what I prefer.  Ubuntu's Stupid Sandwich 19.49 is cancer, people make articles/howtos/bugreports with inconsistent naming making useful tidbits impossible to find.

YYYYMMDD also helps at a glance you know when it was last published, you don't need to translate version to time.


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## 6502 (Jun 21, 2022)

There was "standard" - Windows apps X.XX, Apple - X.X.X. But the new Firefox method is most unpleasant: 88.0, 88.0.1, 89.0, 89.0.1, 90.0, ... Maybe they think big number means that product is very old, supported and good. I remember at least 5 times there were statements that "new Firefox" is 2 times faster than old version. And it was obviously slower than IE at that time.


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## SirDice (Jun 21, 2022)

Profighost said:


> Because Altavista did what a search engine shall do: find _me_ things - information, PDFs, Datasheets, books... etc


Sure Altavista found stuff, but you had to wade through pages of pornsite links to get to it. 



> Google came, everybody was using it exclusevely, also because media brought it up as the first search engine there is, Altavista was useless within a few months and died after a couple of years aftrerwards.


No, Google gave you what you were looking for, on the first page. Often the top, first, result was _exactly_ what you were looking for. That's why people stopped using Altavista, because their search result mostly showed porn/spam links. 



Profighost said:


> Additionally most people believe with Google they search the internet.
> Google doesn't search the internet for you.


Google scrapes and indexes. And their way of indexing and page ranking, at that time, was far superior than anyone else's. Don't get me wrong, I don't like how Google managed to get such a big foothold on ads, analytics and everything else. But their original search website that started it all was brilliant.


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## Profighost (Jun 21, 2022)

6502 said:


> Not sure whether Altavista was


I also don't know, really. But to me it's simple:
It was the time when the internet become quickly popular to not-in-computer-interested people. (Some speak of the "dawn of the internet", because they don't know better.)
They just learned "Google". 
I remember when Windows 3.11 appeared in german tv news "tagesthemen" the famous anchorman Ulrich Wickert said, that Microsoft invented the mouse. (Yeah, really!)

Most never knew anything else. They never asked. They never cared.
That's why not the best things prevail, but where the most money is in.


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## Profighost (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Google gave you what you were looking for, on the first page.


 Since my memories are otherwise, doesn't mean I'm right.
Maybe in those days my perception was anticipated with other things, so I wasn't unhappy to found a lot of porn.

What I do understand - especially in those day, when the internet really exploded - is the need to think about something to make searches more efficient and quicker.
One simply cannot really search the whole Internet everytime someone asks something. It's impossible.

So, of course, what Google does as all searchengines, it searches the internet, create, refresh and organize a large database and let the users search this database.
OK.
But what's NOK in my eyes is, that as a user of Google you're put in some kind of jail, which officially is ment to help you - what also would still be OK, because making things easy means to restrict - but gives no chance to break out of it, letting do you a search in Southamerica like as you were a Brasilian in Brasil.
What's including the technical part of it, collecting as much data about anybody as possible and noboday has any control where, what, when.

If you imagine Google's, facebook's,...etc. data were got into the hand o the Nazis ... they'd found Anne Frank within 5 minutes including driving to the house.


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## hruodr (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> I'm so frigging old school, I'm pre-Google! I also distinctly remember using Google search for the first time. It was amazing.


I also remember it. It was a dutch mathematician that pointed me out of its existence. And yes, it was much
better than other search platforms. The innovative idea was to use finite markow chains to rank the links.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Sure Altavista found stuff, but you had to wade through pages of pornsite links to get to it.


That was the best part!


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## SirDice (Jun 21, 2022)

Profighost said:


> I remember when Windows 3.11 appeared in german tv news "tagesthemen" the famous anchorman Ulrich Wickert said, that Microsoft invented the mouse. (Yeah, really!)


My Amiga had a mouse, and a preemptive multitasking OS long before Windows became 'mainstream'. That said, that remark is somewhat understandable. Today there are many people that believe Apple invented the smartphone. In some parts of the US many people call _any_ game console a "nintendo". Nintendo didn't invent the game console either. But it's all these people know and thus every game console became a "nintendo".


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## Profighost (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> My Amiga had a mouse, and a preemptive multitasking OS long before Windows became 'mainstream'.


ditto


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## astyle (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Bugger. That made me realize I was on the internet _before_ IBrowse was first released in 1996. And that happened even before Google existed (Google search first launched in 1997). I'm so frigging old school, I'm pre-Google! I also distinctly remember using Google search for the first time. It was amazing.


I was in 7th grade when Netscape Navigator came out in December of 1994 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator). And I remember it looking pretty different from IE back then, it came with a WYSIWYG HTML editor that was fun to play with, and I finished 7th grade having become a complete convert from IE to Netscape. IE was a rather awkward browser back then, and did not render some web pages properly. Netscape fixed the rendering issues of the day. Man, those were the times...


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## ziomario (Jun 21, 2022)

Are you talking about your old & good days ? I've started playing with the "Olivetti Prodest PC 128" + MSDOS + BORLAND TURBO PASCAL 5.5. I really loved the Turbo Pascal. I was good and on the 90' I spent 12 hours a day on my PC without interruptions, just to eat. Only by myself I was able to create some videogames,like tennis and karate. I remember how was internet before Google. I used so much Altavista and Netscape as browser. My favorite tool for chatting was ICQ and IRC. I've connected some months after Internet came up.


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## SirDice (Jun 21, 2022)

astyle said:


> And I remember it looking pretty different from IE back then, it came with a WYSIWYG HTML editor that was fun to play with


Wasn't that Netscape Communicator? Navigator was only the browser, Communicator was a whole suite of applications. 



astyle said:


> IE was a rather awkward browser back then, and did not render some web pages properly.


The first IE version came with the Plus! pack for Windows 95. Netscape was already used a lot but was a paid product. IE was free. That pretty much killed Netscape.



ziomario said:


> "Olivetti Prodest PC 128" + MSDOS + BORLAND TURBO PASCAL 5.5.


Had to learn to code Pascal at school on Turbo Pascal 2 or 3, running on a PC emulator on an Amiga 1000. The whole thing ran as slow as molasses.


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## kpedersen (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> But it's all these people know and thus every game console became a "nintendo".


Admittedly I do get a trollish satisfaction at calling my nephew's Steam Deck a Gameboy. He is not a fan of me doing so 



SirDice said:


> The first IE version came with the Plus! pack for Windows 95. Netscape was already used a lot but was a paid product. IE was free. That pretty much killed Netscape.


If I recall, IE also had the fact it used system libraries going for it. It seemed to start up much faster.


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## Menelkir (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Wasn't that Netscape Communicator? Navigator was only the browser, Communicator was a whole suite of applications.


I think he means the one before the Communicator, the Netscape Navigator Gold.


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## SirDice (Jun 21, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> If I recall, IE also had the fact it used system libraries going for it. It seemed to start up much faster.


No doubt that helped too. Netscape looked the same on pretty much every system I ever saw it run on. Probably because it had all the GUI elements, widgets and whatnot embedded in that huge executable.


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## astyle (Jun 21, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> Admittedly I do get a trollish satisfaction at calling my nephew's Steam Deck a Gameboy. He is not a fan of me doing so


 No need for special gaming consoles any more. My Samsung phone will do, thank you very much. There's an app for just about any game, even some that most ppl never heard of, phones have wifi, Bluetooth, and a truckload of other features to make Steam Deck jealous.  Heck, I bet Nintendo has apps out there that make the game controllers obsolete.


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## 6502 (Jun 21, 2022)

ziomario said:


> I've started playing with the "Olivetti Prodest PC 128" + MSDOS + BORLAND TURBO PASCAL 5.5. I really loved the Turbo Pascal.


Sorry but Pascal is something very miserable. Turbo Pascal is good compiler and IDE but Pascal language is bad - mainly the stupid syntax with *:=* assignment instead of *=* and heap of unnecessary words *begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*. C syntax is equivalent for most things in shorter form. I used Borland C++ compiler 2.0 for DOS and 3.0 for Windows.


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## hruodr (Jun 21, 2022)

6502 said:


> but Pascal language is bad - mainly the stupid syntax with *:=* assignment instead of *=* and heap of unnecessary words *begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*.


I also prefer C and its syntax, but I would not judge pascal due to that "stupid syntax" that comes from ALGOL.
C is perhaps more primitive than pascal that for example allows local procedures. All is a question of taste.


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## ziomario (Jun 21, 2022)

6502 said:


> Sorry but Pascal is something very miserable. Turbo Pascal is good compiler and IDE but Pascal language is bad - mainly the stupid syntax with *:=* assignment instead of *=* and heap of unnecessary words *begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*. C syntax is equivalent for most things in shorter form. I used Borland C++ compiler 2.0 for DOS and 3.0 for Windows.



At the first years of '90 it was good. I remember that it was the first attempt of object-oriented programming. Pascal 2 and 3 weren't good,but 5 was good for the time. I felt very comfortable with it. But later I didn't use any other programming language anymore. My career ended there. Don't you think that a programming language is something like a dress that fits better on someone than on others ? And anyway,I was a child and at the time I tried to learn everything by myself without reading the documentation (internet wasn't there yet), but going through trial and errors. For me creating some video games only by myself was a remarkable intellectual work, even if from what you seem to say it seems that programming in pascal was a piece of cake for you. It was 1991.


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## ziomario (Jun 21, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Wasn't that Netscape Communicator? Navigator was only the browser, Communicator was a whole suite of applications.
> 
> 
> The first IE version came with the Plus! pack for Windows 95. Netscape was already used a lot but was a paid product. IE was free. That pretty much killed Netscape.
> ...



Turbo Pascal 5 was notable for its extremely fast compiling times. Why you said that the whole thing ran slow ?


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## astyle (Jun 21, 2022)

ziomario said:


> Turbo Pascal 5 was notable for its extremely fast compiling times. Why you said that the whole thing ran slow ?


Compilation and running are two different things. The 'Turbo' part in Turbo Pascal seems to apply to compilation only.  You'd have to study compiler design, and compare Turbo Pascal to other compilers to understand why.


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## kpedersen (Jun 21, 2022)

astyle said:


> The 'Turbo' part in Turbo Pascal seems to apply to compilation only.


I am inclined to believe that the _Turbo_ part highlighted that it was targeted to the home / hobbyist market. Mostly because the Borland Turbo C++ product was just a cut down version of Borland C++ 3.1. IDE and all. Still very good though. A cult classic.


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## ziomario (Jun 21, 2022)

I had understood the logic "*begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*" very well. What has been the evolution of turbo pascal during the years ? Is there a programming language today that works using that logic ? I liked very much to write procedures and to put them in separated files. I could start again to program something if I could get still comfortable with that lexical structure.


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## obsigna (Jun 21, 2022)

6502 said:


> Sorry but Pascal is something very miserable. Turbo Pascal is good compiler and IDE but Pascal language is bad - mainly the stupid syntax with *:=* assignment instead of *=* and heap of unnecessary words *begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*. C syntax is equivalent for most things in shorter form. I used Borland C++ compiler 2.0 for DOS and 3.0 for Windows.


Sorry, but the := vs. = syntax belongs to one of the most ignorant arguments against Pascal that I've ever heard, and I've heard already a lot.

In common Mathematical Notations (like this one) = is the equal sign, and == is even not mentioned. Many math concepts evolve around things being equal or not to each other and arguably the equal sign belongs to the most important math symbols, if it isn't the most important one. That said we can easily tell apart math aware creators of programming languages from the others, by how the plain equal sign is used. In Pascal it used for the "is equal to" operator (correct) in C it is used for the assignment operator (does not feel very correct).


----------



## shkhln (Jun 21, 2022)

How come this a Pascal discussion thread now? It's a cursed language, leave it alone.


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## obsigna (Jun 21, 2022)

ziomario said:


> I had understood the logic "*begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*" very well. What has been the evolution of turbo pascal during the years ? Is there a programming language today that works using that logic ? I liked very much to write procedures and to put them in separated files. I could start again to program something if I could get still comfortable with that lexical structure.


We got Free Pascal in the ports - lang/fpc. From the manual:

_Free Pascal is designed to be, as much as possible, language and source-level compatible with ISO pascal, Mac Pascal, Turbo Pascal 7.0 and most (if not all) versions of Delphi. It achieves this through a system of compiler directives which tell the compiler what language is targeted (they can be mixed to a certain degree)._​


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## 6502 (Jun 21, 2022)

obsigna said:


> Sorry, but the := vs. = syntax belongs to one of the most ignorant arguments against Pascal that I've ever heard


I am programmer. If you are teacher, I will understand your viewpoint. The problem with := is that assignment is used constantly and you have to click shift in addition to second character, i.e. 3 keys instead of 1. And this is repeated thousands of times. If you have not used C, maybe will not understand and think this is "ignorant". I can say your opinion is stupid.


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## obsigna (Jun 22, 2022)

6502 said:


> I am programmer. If you are teacher, I will understand your viewpoint. The problem with := is that assignment is used constantly and you have to click shift in addition to second character, i.e. 3 keys instead of 1. And this is repeated thousands of times. If you have not used C, maybe will not understand and think this is "ignorant". I can say your opinion is stupid.


This is my GitHub repo, there I am Cyclaero: https://github.com/cyclaero

If you dare to have a look, you will find a lot of C code of mine there, anyway I won't discuss this any further with people who have a mental horizon with a radius of r = 0 (is equal to) and then call this their point of view.


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

6502 said:


> Sorry but Pascal is something very miserable. Turbo Pascal is good compiler and IDE but Pascal language is bad





obsigna said:


> Sorry, but the := vs. = syntax belongs to one of the most ignorant arguments against Pascal



You're absolutely right.

To understand this (Pascal), you need to see the time.
We're talking 1980s.
There was no "computer science" yet at universities.
People getting involved in computers are either urged to use that new technology, mostly natural scientists at universities or office staff of big companies (from those came most reluctance against Unix).
Or were interested in, mostly mathematicians, physicists and electronics engineers (Unix/BSD), and also technically interested students, which mostly only could afford a homecomputer (BASIC), those 1MHz, 64kB, not necessarily with mass storage but with TV connection things.
The "rest" got to computers mostly in the late 90s.

It was completely normal that anybody needed to have at least a small class in computers first before you were allowed to use them.
(At least people learned, what "save file to disk" means, instead of blindly trust the system automatically syncs with a cloud in the background )
Part of most of those classes also contained a bit fundamental start of programming, because this not only teaches you how a computer works but there also often was a need to write at least small programms for yourself.
There was no internet like today, where you just quickly google a free tool that does the job you need.
Most today's users simply don't get the concept of having an powerful automation monster directly in front of them and use it to automate.
They only got "powerful". 
Book tip for the summer:
Clifford Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg - you'll virtually dive into the Berkeley of the early 80s, get a colorimeter of computers of those days, the dawn of internet and especially Berkeley Unix.

Back to (sub)topic:
Pascal was originally never ment to be a programming language for doing real, big stuff.
(Even if modern interpreters are capable of doing a serious job.)
It was ment to lead people to programming by teaching the basic concepts of a higher procedural language (this were pre-objective times) and above all structured programming.

Those homecomputers had a very primitive BASIC in their ROMs, acting as some kind of very primitive OS.
But sadly BASIC was also promoted to be the best start to learn programming with.
That's where this GOTO-spaghetti-code crap came from.

Pascal's syntax is so cumbersome, particulary function names are so long, not to be efficient for programming, but to make the programming elements clearly visible and get closer to natural language, so total newcomers to programming would not completely freak out by seeing short, efficient, abstract syntax.
Or even Assembler, which was the only real alternative to programm something halfway usable on a homecomputer.

Many like me, also started learning programming with (Turbo)Pascal in school, later had problems when switching to C at university.
E.g. you still trying := 
:= may a bit fussy, yes.
It's because the founder of Pascal, Niklaus Wirth, is a mathematics professer (even swiss. Those can be even more picky than germans .)
And he wants it to be correct.

He wanted to have a clear distinguish  between the mathamatical equal = and a computer's value allocation.
Friends who are good in math I tried to teach the very basics of programming, really had a hard time to understand i = i + 1
For people in computer's this is totally clear what this does, because they see the computer's function in it:
The step that the computer first calculates the right side, then the second when it allocates that value to the left.
A mathematician sees no steps here.
He sees an equation, with i is always the same on both sides of  the =
And that's completey useless for what you want a computer have to be done.
Either i on both sides have the same value at the same time, so the equation is wrong.
Or i has no defined value. Then the equation is not solvable as to have a single scalar value.

Kernigham & Richtie just decided not to be so very correct, but instead to have small, short syntax with as less typing and reading effort as possible.

<ps>
<text>
<statement>
<word> then <\word>
<anotherword> some <\anotherword>
<word> day <\word>
 <xml> XML <\xml>
<wordagain> appeared <\wordagain>
<word> and <\word>
<word> we <\word>
<anotherword> discuss <\anotherword>
<nowordbuttext> := <\nowordbuttext>
<word> over <\word>
<nowordbuttext> = <\nowordbuttext>
 <\statement>
<\ps>
<\text>



If you bother about Pascal's syntax already then XML must be really annoying.
XML does everything what over seventy years of computer science has figured out and defined as DON'Ts
Except for webpages there is absolutely no reason and no excuse to use this shit for anything!
Anybody who uses it in my eyes failes the fundamental rules of coding.
 "Keep readability above efficiency" - Yeah, then don't do XML! Never, ever!!
Because XML is neither of it.

Even on FreeBSD I trip more ond more over that shit.
Just yesterday again:  /etc/regdomain.xml
wtf is the use of doing this file in XML!?!
There is none, except you think you have to because others also do.

Sorry, frankly, but there is no other word to describe this as crap!
Endless special characters, lots of problems, with charsets, escapecodes..., more bytes to be processed and stored... - problems only for one single no-real-benefit at all, only:
"looks better" in a browser. Great!
I am not doing my system's config work with a browser.
Besides I do not know what the browser saves and supplies to other websites/services,
(where we were back to topic, again)
I am editing textfiles.
So therefore I am neither using a browser,
nor I'm doing code on LibreOfficeWriter, MS Word or shit neither.
I am using a texteditor.
If you need something from such a file, or want to edit ist, you cannot use it as a template,
you cannot copy-paste it,
because first you need get rid off all that XML-rubbish. 
Besides it's hard to read that trashed up rubbish, xml forces an additionally extra step whixh neither you nor the computer wants:
User: text -> xml-interpreter -> xml
Prg: xml -> xml-interpreter -> text
That's BS!
text <-> text
Basta!
We don't need to discuss := or =
If you want a=1
don't do something like
<bs>
<var> a <\var> <=> = <\=> <value> 1 <\value>
<\bs>
just write
a=1
!!!1!eleven


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## 6502 (Jun 22, 2022)

Pascal syntax is good for introduction and first glance on source code. When beginner does not know any programming language and see: procedure, begin, a := 10, end, etc. he/she will think "ok, I understand it" (and does not understand anything). But a real programming language is not for first glance but for experienced programmers. Every detail in well known and enclosing block with brackets { and } is 1000 times better than writing and reading of unnecessary begin-end. Waste of time to write and unnecessary letters on screen when reading. Pascal can be good for education. But in reality, many people continue to use it later for production. It was very bad idea to use Pascal in Delphi - for that reason I completely ignored Delphi when it was in use.


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

6502 said:


> But in reality, many people continue to use it later for production


I'm not aware of Pascal being used so much on real projects. C, C++ and C# are the ones which the most code was done so far (at least as far as I think I know.)
But you introduced another - important -  point of software engineering completely.
Namely the question when to use which programming language for what.
And who decides?
As far as I'm concerned in many projects the to be used language is not the most useful for the job, but what boss read in some magazine is the current top-trendy one.
...and then you stick with the code, because nobody has the will nor the time to rewrite it all....


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## getopt (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> We're talking 1980s.
> There was no "computer science" yet at universities.


Looks like some youngsters need lessons in IT-history. 
Where do you think UCSD-Pascal came from?









						UCSD Pascal - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## getopt (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> I remember when Windows 3.11 appeared in german tv news "tagesthemen" the famous anchorman Ulrich Wickert said, that Microsoft invented the mouse. (Yeah, really!)


Hearsay. See _AEG-Telefunken RKS 100-86_ from 1968 there:









						Computer mouse - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

Guys!
You don't need to tell me there was a mouse before Windows.
I just quoted UW to make a point how media works.
Myself I used an Amiga 500 and later a 2000, and there had been Atari 1040s..., and we had several Sun's SPARCstations with Solaris Desktop (X) in university (Amiga plus those I learned to love the concept of Unix), long before Windows even appeared.
I sat before tv and just thought what bs they are announcing in tv-news!

If you used Amiga/Atari and/or Unix before Windows, you not only learned, that there was a mouse before Windows, you also missed many things for many years on Windows, other systems already had. Such as real multitasking, stable and usable functioning networking with nfs, or compare shells or Amiga's Rexx with what you have on Windows until "power-shell"  appeared....


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> It's because the founder of Pascal, Niklaus Wirth, is a mathematics professer (even swiss. Those can be even more picky than germans .


Wirth is known for two things mainly: writing a standard book about algorithms called "Algorithms and Data Structures", and creating several programming languages. Pascal is just one of these, and one of the older ones. 

Pascal dates back to 1968 up 1972. Therefore it's not so bad for a language from these days. Later he created in order Modula 2, Modula 3 and Oberon.


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

I know.
But my post(s) are already (too) long.


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## hruodr (Jun 22, 2022)

getopt said:


> Hearsay. See _AEG-Telefunken RKS 100-86_ from 1968 there:







_View: https://youtu.be/TpNhkg3ROPE&t=60_


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

this video really is great. The germans are to the point 
I didn't kew that Looney Tunes made "political" toons in WWII.
Thanks!


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## 6502 (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> If you used Amiga/Atari and/or Unix before Windows, you not only learned, that there was a mouse before Windows, you also missed many things for many years on Windows, other systems already had. Such as real multitasking, stable and usable functioning networking with nfs, or compare shells or Amiga's Rexx with what you have on Windows until "power-shell"  appeared....


Yes, but Windows was the first OS with 100,000,000 users. Not excellent but standard. Apple was good but changed their platform every 5-7 years - Apple II, then 68K Mac, then PowerMac, then Intel Mac. DOS/Windows was fully compatible 25-30 years from 1983 (DOS 2.0) to end of Windows XP (2008-2010).


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## SirDice (Jun 22, 2022)

ziomario said:


> Turbo Pascal 5 was notable for its extremely fast compiling times. Why you said that the whole thing ran slow ?


The Amiga 1000 had a 7 MHz 68000, we had to run Amiga transformer on it that emulated a 80286 PC at something like 300 kHz, then ran Turbo Pascal on top of that. Yeah, it was horrendously slow. 



Profighost said:


> We're talking 1980s.
> There was no "computer science" yet at universities.


Yes, exactly. I'm talking school (MTS; Don't know how that translates to other school systems) in '87 to '90. The school I went to (Christiaan Huygens) was the first in the Netherlands that actually had something that would eventually become computer sciences. The courses I took there was 80% hardware and 20% software. The 'software' side was mostly based around learning to code in Pascal.


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

6502 said:


> DOS/Windows was fully compatible 25-30 years from 1983 (DOS 2.0) to end of Windows XP


Oh, no, no, no.... Sorry, I disagree. You may have not experienced Windows before XP, then.

There are not points against Windows, only, of course.
I don't want to spread the whole history of Windows here (we're talking about firefox, browsers and how to fit this into Unix philosophy, actually)
So only that much:
The greatest thing Bill Gates achieved for humankind was to disconnect software from hardware.

Until Microsoft's DOS, and later Windows, one had to decide, which Software you want and then buy the according computer where it runs on.
Other way around ment, if you couldn't afford a machine (e.g. capable of running Unix >10k$) or the software license (e.g. Unix >10k$), you need to be settle with something (much) less (<2k$).
This was not the reason only why hardware prices were massively lowered, because since then any company can produce computer's hw, not IBM, Sun, Commodore,.... only, dictating their prices ("buy it or leave it").
IBM and Apple were almost kicked out of business then; Commodore has been killed.
But this also brought the revolutionary break-through for massive use of computers, and later the internet, and more.

One cannot be grateful enough to Bill Gates for having done that.

However, on the other hand this ain't no excuse nor greenpass for doing lots of things worse, already solved better on other systems.
Including to force users into a badly predefined, non-intuitive one-size-fits-nobdy-really structure, that will change witrh every new version.
For newcomers never ever seen anything different, this was great:
No abstract computer commands on boring textfields, but a colorful desktop promising "Everybody can use computers from the start without learning anything about them."
Besides I don't want to roll out all that free support done by legions of people just having the slightest computer knowledge to anybody unwilling to learn even the most rudimentary basics of computers, my prosecution agains MS is, that this way they made their users stupid and dependent.

For anybody already knew Amiga OS or Unix, Windows was a massive regress.
For many years. Not to say decades.
That's why people started FreeBSD or Linus Torvalds thought "crap! This can be done otherwise and better."

One may say:
First Microsoft freed software from hardware.
Then the Opensource community freed software (and computers).

Besides heavily unstable machines 
(3.11, 95, 98 and even NT [the reasons for that lies in the problem we still face today, but a s not as heavily as then, is that you have a giant lot of different hardware modules that sholl wor properly together; and it was a long progress to reach that state we have to today 
[again in this point mainly because of opensource, not Microsoft]) 
one of those thing what wasn't great was that Windows wasn't compatible with anything else 
(without the massive growing pressure from Opensource they'd still be uncompatible to anything) 
And the worst part: 
Even not fully compatible with Windows itself.

If you ever tried to open a Word- or Excelfile from a former version (we're talking old-days, pre-XP-times, when there was no "Office" but Word and Excel, version numbers <6, pre xml-docs), and saw the jumble on your screen - if even...
...or you ever got your LAN killed, because someone connected a NT machine between all those 95ers, that did nothing else as just to took over and kill the LAN...
... could tell warstories the whole day....

.....you would not agree with "_fully compatible_".
Definitive: NO.

Compatibility formely (before app. 1994...1998) was clearly defined to hardware.
"IBM-PC compatible" even if it already ment MS DOS or early Windows, was as normal as "Amiga", "Atari", or what have you.

Since then compatibility is/shall be defined as the capability of reading/showing/editing data, which means files.
You have to agree e.g. on PDF, JPG, OGG.... as a standardformat for its purposes, not on which Hardware or OS it's usable.


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## 6502 (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> Oh, no, no, no.... Sorry, I disagree. You may have not experienced Windows before XP, then.


I have used all versions from Windows 3.0 (before 3.1) to XP. Have good experience with Win16 and Win32 API.


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## ziomario (Jun 22, 2022)

I still see too many programmers who think that the language they have chosen is superior to the language that others have chosen. Don't you think,instead,that a programming language is something like a dress that fits better on someone than on others ?


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## 6502 (Jun 22, 2022)

I have used Pascal for short before C if this is important. I have made a comparison. Like you, I can say that "I see too many programmers" who think like this: "I know Pacal from school and don't want to learn anything else. Pascal can do everything. I tried to read a book for C but it seems complex. I will use Pascal as long as possible."


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## SirDice (Jun 22, 2022)

Popularity of certain programming languages changed a lot over the years. I think I posted this one before: 



_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI_


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

ziomario said:


> a programming language is something like a dress that fits better on someone than on others ?


The choice which programming language to be used shall not be done by personal flavors, which suits you better, which one is currently trendy.
Of course you're way more efficient in programming within a language your are settled in.
But if you know a programming language - if you know programming - you fit in any language quickly.
You may get the one or the other concept first, but you don't need to start all over again.

The programming language shall be chosen for it's pupose.
Nearly all languages are developed for to fit better in a special purpose, because others don't.

So _if _you can chose (most can't, because it's given: the boss decided, or there is already lots of code you continue working on) the best thing would be first carfully analyse the job your program needs to do. Then look which languages there are, which one comes closest, and then chose what you feel best with.
Besides there are other arguments, like is there an editor (e.g. syntax highlighting), are the compiler safe - need it to be safe, etc. etc.
It's not easy. Still you may learn an additionaly language.
But this way you may have the chance to face fewer problems, such as you need to define some type of data that isn't yet smoothly offered by the languages you already know, can be better handled... whatever.

I often face restistance when I recommend to use Assembler for small, simple 8bit-Microcontroller projects.
They all want to do C.
Well, yes, C is closest to Assembler, and have lots of advantages.
But not seldom they run into timing problems.
And I ask:"Did you measure how many milliseconds this piece of code uses to be processed?"
Blank faces.
So I asked again:"Did you changed the compiler?"
Blank faces:"Why? C is C."
No. Not necessarily. Even not if "ANSI C" is written on the box.
But apart from that every compiler produces other machine code for the same C source.
So with critical, narrow timing requirements, you'll better check the process time for your code and test if what you burden you microcontroller additionally with.
If you're doing something with UI on a PC or embedded sys with OS, you have seldom problems then.
But if you program a control loop (e.g. power electronics) where a constant frequency is mandatory to have the system stable, and if you look only at your higher language's source, blindly trust every compiler and simply rely on the speed of the processor will handle it in any case, without measuring and testing, you may run into massive probs,
not understanding them.

Best example:
Look at your FreeBSD!
You have bash scripting, Perl, Python.... - no need to do everything in C/C++.
From all languages you know you chose one best fitting to the job.
So if you're doing programming and can chose, keep an eye open, what languages there are. With which background for what purpoese they have been devolped, and chose what fit's you'r current task best.
Not what's most trendy at the moment, where's the most gossip about.

Hardcore professionals like Hunt & Thomas "The pragmatic programnmer" advice: learn a new programming language every week.
...to me... no, I don't do that much programming


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## Vull (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> <snip>...
> To understand this (Pascal), you need to see the time.
> We're talking 1980s.
> There was no "computer science" yet at universities.
> ...



I obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Illinois, USA (SIU-C) in 1986. SIU-C had a PDP-11 running one of the early UNIXes, although it was not widely available to underclassmen. Instead we mostly wrote PASCAL programs to learn basic computing concepts, on the university's MUSIC system (Multi-User System for Interactive Computing), sometimes using IBM punch cards and keypunch machines, but often using the university's full screen "Panel" editor terminals, and obtained our green bar paper printouts, which were generated by tractor-fed wide-carriage printers at the student computer lab. PASCAL was preferred over BASIC, by me and at the university, precisely because it was an available structured language, but I also wrote in machine language for 8080 microprocessors, in COBOL, and in assembly language for Zilog Z80 microprocessors and for the university mainframe computers. In earlier years I also wrote a debugger for the Z80.

I dropped out of computing after about 8 years as a business computing specialist, and as an on-again, off-again student, in 1989, to open a comic book retail store and subdistribution business, and wrote a fairly complete customized inventory control system from scratch for our businesses, over a period of about 5 years, using Turbo Pascal on one of the original IBM-PCs, which we had obtained for the store. It included an RDBMS of my own design which I implemented using dynamically loaded Pascal procedures, using names as short as XSEEK and XSCAN. Later, after our distributors started offering on-line ordering features, I added a purchase ordering subsystem which allowed us to download text file based catalogs and upload our monthly orders, which we electronically combined with customer orders using the IBM-PC. Getting back to topic for a minute, we also downloaded our catalogs from the distributors' sites using Netscape Navigator if I recall correctly, later to return our completed orders via upload or on floppy disks.

Since then, I haven't used Pascal in about 20 years, but still believe it to be a very usable structured programming language, taught to me back in those days when structured languages weren't so popular. Also, if I'm not mistaken, newer versions of Pascal allow substitutions of { and } for BEGIN and END statements.


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## Erichans (Jun 22, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Popularity of certain programming languages changed a lot over the years. I think I posted this one before:
> 
> 
> 
> _View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI_



The protruding orange-brown bar, long at the top, reminds me of the humorous and polemic article by Ed Post


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

6502 said:


> I have used all versions from Windows 3.0 (before 3.1) to XP. Have good experience with Win16 and Win32 API.


Okay. But then maybe alone or not having to exchange data with others.

I have faced many situations, when there were several Windows versions at the same time, plus other systems.
Still only in Windows you were already facing problems:
You had a 98 machine, a friend runs 95, in U's institute they have NT, and you have to work together on the same project, exchanging files.
Even that wasn't 100%.
And when some one else came along, still on 3.11 .... - faster to write it all new again.

Then this printer fits not that Windows.... no driver available for that....

And this ain't respecting at those times additionally other systems also existed, with own filesystems, code-tables and fileformats:
Apple, Amiga, Unix....

If you faced that, you would not agree to the term
"_fully_ compatible"

Sorry, but No. Definitively not.
Most compatibilty under Windows was brought from opensource community by several small toosl you additonally install under windows, to be able to exchange data with other systems.
That came from Opensource, not MS.

And since even today's better than since, 
Opensource System are way more compatible to others.
Try to mount a FAT32 or NTFS under FreeBSD or Linux.
No prob at all or at least possible.  
Then try to mount ufs, zfs, ext2.... nfs(!) under Windows.
Especially if you don't own the "platinum professional business first class diamond" license... good luck with that! 

Or we both simply have a different kind of definition what "compatible" means.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> The programming language shall be chosen for it's pupose.
> Nearly all languages are developed for to fit better in a special purpose, because others don't.


For most the purpose is to match your personal CV nicely with a juicy job ad. Heavily wanted are rockstar developers nowadays, so there's only one logical choice as programming language: Rockstar!





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BqN7ZCjwlg_


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## Profighost (Jun 22, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> ...Rockstar!



(you induced me the picture of someone programming by jumping in front of his Playstation.
Yeah. Of course, that's where the future is!)

Yeah. I didn't respect this point, thought as an engineer:
"What's needs to get the job best done."
Not as a salesman :"What's produces the most positive feeling."


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## ziomario (Jun 22, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Popularity of certain programming languages changed a lot over the years. I think I posted this one before:
> 
> 
> 
> _View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI_



Ohhh that's so nice : on 1980 Q2,Pascal became n. 1. So Im happy that I've used the most important language of that time,despite a lot of programmers even today don't like to give to it its own merits.


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## 6502 (Jun 22, 2022)

FORTRAN has been #1 for long time. Why you do not try it? Or COBOL.


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## ziomario (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> The choice which programming language to be used shall not be done by personal flavors, which suits you better, which one is currently trendy.
> Of course you're way more efficient in programming within a language your are settled in.
> But if you know a programming language - if you know programming - you fit in any language quickly.
> You may get the one or the other concept first, but you don't need to start all over again.
> ...



My question assumed that the choice had to concern several languages that can be used to achieve the same purpose. I thought you understood that. But sorry I should have specified it. And my question did not involve using a language because it is fashionable, but because you feel it or not as part of your self.


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## Deleted member 70435 (Jun 22, 2022)

even, other than a Unix, that's what we have, I've been using Firefox for a decade. and I don't intend to stop using it. the worst of it is Google Chrome, something I've hated since the beginning. Firefox is full of useless things and you are right about that, but on the good side, in several versions of Firefox, the community can mobilize and maintain an exclusive, under another name of course. I wanted Seamonkey but would have to spend my time creating ports.

Firefox has its problems but it would be worse without it. chrome has a lot of optimization problems, due memory usage, not well worked by its Engineers, something that leads to high consumption. just like Firefox is becoming, all this junk, heavy. something uncomfortable.

I made a suggestion to have Seamonkey back in the project, Polemoon, something lighter. I may be exaggerating, but this will really define a unix system. on NetBSD I compile seamonkey, and that's ok, I don't need a lot of unnecessary modifications.


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## hruodr (Jun 22, 2022)

Vadim Alexandrov said:


> even, other than a Unix, that's what we have, I've been using Firefox for a decade. and I don't intend to stop using it. the worst of it is Google Chrome, something I've hated since the beginning.


Well, there are other opinions, for example:



			'Re: chromium and firefox - myths and facts?' - MARC


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## hruodr (Jun 22, 2022)

6502 said:


> FORTRAN has been #1 for long time. Why you do not try it?


As far as I know, it is the preferred language for supercomputing.


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## astyle (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> Pascal's syntax is so cumbersome, particulary function names are so long, not to be efficient for programming, but to make the programming elements clearly visible and get closer to natural language, so total newcomers to programming would not completely freak out by seeing short, efficient, abstract syntax.


Java has the same issue of being prone to long, headache-inducing function names. Heck, any language is prone to those.


Profighost said:


> I know.
> But my post(s) are already (too) long.


Yeah, if you run into ralphbsz , the Forums will run out of disk space holding conversation transcripts


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## hruodr (Jun 22, 2022)

Profighost said:


> I didn't kew that Looney Tunes made "political" toons in WWII.


There are other, for example:





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVtB6afVg9A_


And also from disney:





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q12wrtV5KNI_


As child, I saw the last in television, but perhaps that in today unthinkable.


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## astyle (Jun 22, 2022)

I'm not a mod, but I'd still like to ask to keep politics out, and keep the discussions technical.


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## hruodr (Jun 22, 2022)

astyle said:


> I'm not a mod, but I'd still like to ask to keep politics out, and keep the discussions technical.


Well, I agree that we must keep the discussion technical, but I cannot call the cartons in today's context political, and I do not see any space for political discussions there, it is just a small deviation.


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## qorg11 (Jun 22, 2022)

Firefox decadence began in my opinion when they released Firefox 57 aka Firefox Quantum. When they dropped XUL extensions and only was possible to use WebExtensions add-ons.

Firefox now does a lot of non intuitive things, that it didn't do before. For example the new URL bar, before you could make that one click puts the cursor when you clicked and 2 clicks selects the whole bar. Now one clicks changes the bar and there's no way to change this behavior. Firefox is giving less control to the users in every release. I used to use the Pale Moon web browser, which is based in an older version of firefox. But there's not a port of Pale Moon in FreeBSD. Altough it runs well with the Linux binary compatibility.


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## astyle (Jun 22, 2022)

Well, Firefox is not the only game in town... and we have the FreeBSD ports to thank for that.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 22, 2022)

Vadim Alexandrov said:


> I made a suggestion to have Seamonkey back in the project, Polemoon, something lighter. I may be exaggerating, but this will really define a unix system. on NetBSD I compile seamonkey, and that's ok, I don't need a lot of unnecessary modifications.



Pale Moon? Please, no. Their developers have got a very bad reputation and are often viewed as arrogant when it comes to ports.

Just like here: https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86

Also some of the former porters trying to get it on FreeBSD telling this:


> >_ There was a long discussion on this mailing list in December 2019._
> >_ Please check the list archives for details._
> >
> >_ Basically, the Pale Moon developers insist that one use private copies_
> ...





			[oi-dev] What's wrong with Pale Moon?
		




			FreeBSD Palemoon branding violation


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## astyle (Jun 22, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> Pale Moon? Please, no. Their developers have got a very bad reputation and are often viewed as arrogant when it comes to ports.
> 
> Just like here: https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
> 
> ...


Vadim Alexandrov  was suggesting 'Polemoon',  not 'Pale Moon'. Maybe someone could typo-squat on this one?


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## jmos (Jun 23, 2022)

Vadim Alexandrov said:


> I wanted Seamonkey but would have to spend my time creating ports.


Others wanted that, too, so there is already one available


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## fernandel (Jul 2, 2022)

Maybe we will have in the ports:
librewolf


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## kpedersen (Jul 2, 2022)

Following that librewolf bug report was quite interesting. In particular it flagged this service:

https://privacytests.org/

If the open-source community could normalize a high (perfect?) score in this being a requirement for an acceptable browser, that would be a really good thing.

Some reverse trolling could be in order. Go on every browser forum and spam "wHy cHrOme score be so baD hEre?"


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## scottro (Jul 3, 2022)

This thread got me interested in librewolf so I tried it on Fedora which has a package for it. Much faster than firefox, doesn't require me going through the settings to set new tabs to a blank page. I like it,  I hope it gets in the ports tree.  So thanks fernandel, I'm glad you mentioned it.


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## meaw229a (Jul 3, 2022)

Seems interesting. From a spyware point of view it looks good.



			Librewolf â€” Spyware Watchdog


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## ziomario (Jul 3, 2022)

when it will be available ?


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## scottro (Jul 3, 2022)

At present, from what I saw on their website, you can get it in OpenBSD. Out of several Linux VM's, I could only get it on Fedora. The flatpak didn't work on Alma and the Arch AUR couldn't find the gpg signature on the build.


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## bgrant (Jul 3, 2022)

Profighost said:


> We're talking 1980s.  There was no "computer science" yet at universities.


I got my BS Computer Science degree in Southern California in 1978.  I then went to UCLA for a Graduate School where the CS dept had been in existence for some time and was participating in the development of ARPANET the predecessor of today's Internet.


ziomario said:


> I had understood the logic "*begin-end*,* begin-end*, *procedure*, *function*" very well. What has been the evolution of turbo pascal during the years ? Is there a programming language today that works using that logic ?


As to begin-end and := syntax they were somewhat 'cool ideas' by computer scientists to help create better error messages from the compilers by knowing better what was intended.

As a grad student at UCLA I taught ALGOL68 and subsequently ported the compiler to a new architecture (PDP-11 to VAX) on UNIX.  You might be amused by ALGOL68's version of begin-end.   IF-THEN-ELSE-FI; CASE-ESAC; WHILE-DO-OD.

It took me a while to be willing to live by the 'implied begin-end' in Python's indentation, I was and am much more comfortable with C and Perl's brackets '{}'.

Back to the regularly scheduled discussion.


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## astyle (Jul 3, 2022)

bgrant said:


> As a grad student at UCLA I taught ALGOL68 and subsequently ported the compiler to a new architecture (PDP-11 to VAX) on UNIX. You might be amused by ALGOL68's version of begin-end. IF-THEN-ELSE-FI; CASE-ESAC; WHILE-DO-OD.


Seriously??? that stuff still lives on in $HOME/.shrc and $HOME/.login...


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## ziomario (Jul 4, 2022)

astyle said:


> Seriously??? that stuff still lives on in $HOME/.shrc and $HOME/.login...



Which kind of cool projects can I do today if I learn ALGOL68 ?


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## ziomario (Jul 4, 2022)

I have a better question to ask you. Let's say that on 90' I liked really much creating videogames with the turbo pascal 5.5. In particular there was a game that I enjoyed very much to play. The name was Prince of Persia. Today I would like to create my version of that game. Which language do you suggest to me to use now that you know that I like Pascal ? But,for sure today I can't use Pascal anymore. It's pretty limited. I would like to use a more modern language. But it should not be too much complicated,because I'm too old,I think,to learn C.


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## bgrant (Jul 4, 2022)

Well, languages are like religion — easy to get into arguments on which is the right one.  But I’ll take a stab at an answer.  You don’t mention a platform so I’ll assume FreeBSD/X but the following could also apply to Windows (and MAYBE Apple OSX).  iPhones, Androids, Tablets are another story.

Rust is a new language that is supposed to help one avoid certain bad coding practices but I think it is like C so you might decide to pass.

I personally love Perl but it too is like C and I wouldn’t write a game in it.

Java is really popular and has the power to write the game in but it also is kind of C like.

So I’d probably suggest Python.  It is one of the most popular languages out there.  Python has tons of free getting started books and a great set of libraries that you can build on top of.  I believe it has all the abilities to create windows and write to them which you probably want for games.

Maybe someone else who has written games can chime in.


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## Criosphinx (Jul 4, 2022)

For a personal project you can use almost any language you like.

For example you could use Free Pascal with editors/lazarus

For games you probably would use a framework or engine, most of which are written in C/C++ with bindings for many other languages.


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## Phishfry (Jul 4, 2022)

meaw229a said:


> Seems interesting. From a spyware point of view it looks good.


Very nice site. I have always been annoyed watching my firewall with pftop when I fire up SeaMonkey.


			SeaMonkey - Spyware Watchdog


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## hruodr (Jul 4, 2022)

ziomario said:


> But it should not be too much complicated,because I'm too old,I think,to learn C.


No. If you programmed pascal, you will learn C in one day.


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## ziomario (Jul 4, 2022)

hruodr said:


> No. If you programmed pascal, you will learn C in one day.



My dream is to create the multiplayer version of prince of persia in 2D. I would like that the enemies of the prince were humans,not robots. Would not that be so cool ? What's the better platform for games ? Windows.


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## covacat (Jul 4, 2022)

for simpler games like '90s prince of persia you can use js + phaser (phaser.io)
runs well as long as you have decent opengl acceleration in the browser
what i did runs well on mac / windows / xbox one (via edge) / decent smart phones
it sucked on all my linux boxes (all arm) ( i don't have a freebsd workstation)


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## PMc (Jul 4, 2022)

Ahh, Firefox. While implementing IPv6 in various regards, I was looking at the traffic. This firefox talks to dozens of sites, all the time, even when fully idle - sites I do not know and have no rDNS.
What is it talking all the time?



ralphbsz said:


> You use "unix" as an adjective in the title. Can you define it?


Some of us certainly can. (For some, it's a religion, and I count myself among these.)



ralphbsz said:


> And: Firefox has a market share that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, in percent. Where does development funding for it come from? I don't know. Supposedly the development is controlled or organized by the Mozilla Foundation. Their total budget is about $25M per year, but according to their tax return, none of that is spend on software engineering for Firefox (instead it is used for "agenda setting, movement building, and leadership development"). The first $1.5M go into paying executives, plus another executive who gets $2.5M from an "associated for-profit organization". So perhaps Firefox development is all volunteers? In that case, what you describe (which I would call "bugs" or "horrible UI design") are just the state of the art.


Hm, that sounds interesting. But then, look at FreeBSD: I think that would look more or less similar and apparently is indeed all-volunteer plus things sponsored by corporate users.

But then, look: when www was created in 1990, it was a cool thing: you could now easily present your scientific papers or charts or drafts or similar. But this has changed entirely. The Internet no longer is a scientific community.
For at least 15 years now, www is practically equated with a sales pump; The only commonly known purpose the Internet is considered to have for ordinary people is the web, and the only commonly considered usecase of the web is sales.

The browser then is the vital component in the middle: the engine driving the sales pump.

This has no longer anything to do with scientific achievements, it is just about making money, in a very profane sense.
Now what I don't understand: are there really hipsters out there who think it cool to work for free, as volunteers, only to help the rich people make millions and billions more of money? How does that work?


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## scottro (Jul 4, 2022)

BTW vermaden's valuable news for the week https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/valuable-news-2022-07-04.85743/ has a link to an article on Librewolf, though it's not that informative. 








						Valuable News – 2022/07/04
					

Article here.  FreeBSD, The FreeBSD Foundation, and The FreeBSD Forums are not associated with the content of this article.




					forums.freebsd.org


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## ziomario (Jul 4, 2022)

PMc said:


> Ahh, Firefox. While implementing IPv6 in various regards, I was looking at the traffic. This firefox talks to dozens of sites, all the time, even when fully idle - sites I do not know and have no rDNS.
> What is it talking all the time?
> 
> 
> ...



---> The browser then is the vital component in the middle: the engine driving the sales pump.

some days ago I've invited you to play with your imagination,trying to imagine which piece of software do you think can be used instead of a browser,now and in the future,but no one replied to my invitation.


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## eternal_noob (Jul 4, 2022)

ziomario said:


> trying to imagine which piece of software do you think can be used instead of a browser


A neuronal link. USB socket in your head.


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## PMc (Jul 4, 2022)

ziomario said:


> ---> The browser then is the vital component in the middle: the engine driving the sales pump.
> 
> some days ago I've invited you to play with your imagination,trying to imagine which piece of software do you think can be used instead of a browser,now and in the future,but no one replied to my invitation.


Well, probably a garden where you grow your own food. You won't have much time to surf the web then.

But that doesn't answer my question. I'm trying to understand how this business does actually work now. There is more money involved than ever before, while on the other hand, rulers here promised in 2020 to provide society with ten million additional longterm-unemployed in order to reduce labour expenses - and I'm one of them.


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## astyle (Jul 4, 2022)

eternal_noob said:


> A neuronal link. USB socket in your head.


Germany already manufactures components for cochlear implants, so this may be not that far off...  

But I'm seeing more and more posts looking for money-making ideas in here and on Discord...  mostly by ppl who have no idea how money-earning even works.


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## ziomario (Jul 4, 2022)

covacat said:


> for simpler games like '90s prince of persia you can use js + phaser (phaser.io)
> runs well as long as you have decent opengl acceleration in the browser
> what i did runs well on mac / windows / xbox one (via edge) / decent smart phones
> it sucked on all my linux boxes (all arm) ( i don't have a freebsd workstation)



Maybe I can start from this : https://github.com/oklemenz/PrinceJS. First of all I need to understand how the code works. And when I have understood it,my desire is to make the multiplayer version. Maybe a version with a lot of princes who are trying to do the same thing and only one will be able to do it : to save the princess. With the individual prince who can come back to the castle again and again,for example for 10 lifes,before to die totally. So,as long as you play all the game levels,you had to fight and kill a lot of princes during your walk who try to do the same as you. I presume that's very complicated to change the code in the way I want.


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## 6502 (Jul 5, 2022)

PMc said:


> Ahh, Firefox. While implementing IPv6 in various regards, I was looking at the traffic. This firefox talks to dozens of sites, all the time, even when fully idle - sites I do not know and have no rDNS.


This sounds bad. Is there similar traffic in Chrome/Edge?


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## Menelkir (Jul 5, 2022)

6502 said:


> This sounds bad. Is there similar traffic in Chrome/Edge?


This is the addons checking for updates and other stuff, safebrowsing, sync (yes, it checks even if you're not logged in), health report, pocket and many other contraptions checking for updates. Chrome/Edge are like 10x worse since they also monitor sites you browse to "improve the user experience".


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## astyle (Jul 5, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> This is the addons checking for updates and other stuff, safebrowsing, sync (yes, it checks even if you're not logged in), health report, pocket and many other contraptions checking for updates. Chrome/Edge are like 10x worse since they also monitor sites you browse to "improve the user experience".


Any recommendations for browsers that don't do shit without my permission???


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 5, 2022)

Lynx, w3m, elinks.


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## 6502 (Jul 5, 2022)

GUI if possible.


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## astyle (Jul 5, 2022)

yeah, I want to be able to go to Amazon and ESPN and Discord. I can't do jack if they want to analyze my clicks on their sites to death, but my own browser has to behave, y'know.


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## Menelkir (Jul 5, 2022)

astyle said:


> yeah, I want to be able to go to Amazon and ESPN and Discord. I can't do jack if they want to analyze my clicks on their sites to death, but my own browser has to behave, y'know.


Librewolf is one of the best options right now, there's a PR waiting.
Ungoogled-chromium doesn't have any effort to port on FreeBSD right now, and probably will never have since www/chromium itself already have a massive amount of patches to make it work on FreeBSD.
www/iridium also looks good from this site perspective. Just make sure you check the addons used from time to time (since you don't have an update check, your addons will also get outdated without any kind of notification, this is also valid to Librewolf).
Badwolf maybe is doable, but there's no port effort yet.
www/qutebrowser doesn't have issues.
Seamonkey works well, was dropped from ports because  of python2 deprecation (funny enough that some ports still uses python2 and they aren't dropped). The only issue with Seamoney is the google safebrowsing, which you can disable it.

If you really want to keep using www/firefox, there's some guides and mitigations out there, such as arkenfox. Here's a guide.


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## Phishfry (Jul 5, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> funny enough that some ports still uses python2 and they aren't dropped)


Oh no you didn't!!!
I have been muffled on this topic because I couldn't quite figure out the internal logistics.
It's easy to criticize. Portsmgr job is not something easy.
Hats off for best effort && jmos help.


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## Menelkir (Jul 5, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Oh no you didn't!!!
> I have been muffled on this topic because I couldn't quite figure out the internal logistics.
> It's easy to criticize. Portsmgr job is not something easy.
> Hats off for best effort && jmos help.


Isn't even a critic, all packages depending on py2 was dropped (which is understandable) and some aren't because...? Ok, let's say mail/mailman and www/moinmoin are important (and they are). Now let's talk about games/renpy? Don't make me explain what is done with renpy.


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## SirDice (Jul 5, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> and some aren't because...?


The difference is a _build_ requirement or a _run_ requirement. Some ports seem to use some build system that's based on Python 2. But it only requires Python 2 during the build, it's not a _run_ requirement for those ports.


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## Menelkir (Jul 5, 2022)

SirDice said:


> The difference is a _build_ requirement or a _run_ requirement. Some ports seem to use some build system that's based on Python 2. But it only requires Python 2 during the build, it's not a _run_ requirement for those ports.


games/renpy have _build_ and _run_ depends on devel/py-future 2.7.


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## SirDice (Jul 5, 2022)

Well, that's probably why it has this line:

```
DEPRECATED=	Uses deprecated version of python
```









						Chapter 13. Dos and Don'ts
					

A list of common dos and don'ts that are encountered during the FreeBSD porting process




					docs.freebsd.org
				




Also note this commit:





						ports - FreeBSD ports tree
					






					cgit.freebsd.org


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 5, 2022)

astyle said:


> Any recommendations for browsers that don't do shit without my permission???


As you want something with a GUI: www/dillo2. This is probably as barebones as it gets for a GUI browser, it has no Javascript and lacks a lot of features which could leak your private data. Let's just say it's target audience is very old school web usage, or just displaying man pages and such.







If just looking for a feature reduced browser, which uses a modern rendering engine then maybe Midori might fit that bill. www/midori
It nowadays uses Chromium as rendering engine.


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## Menelkir (Jul 5, 2022)

I almost forgot, there's also www/otter-browser and www/falkon.


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## Phishfry (Jul 5, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> As you want something with a GUI: www/dillo2.


Right and why is Dillo3 called www/dillo2 ???
Inquiring minds want to know.
Ok legacy cruft. www/dillo spawned www/dillo2 to keep old whiners happy like me.
But .... Maybe time to consider merging back to www/dillo


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## Phishfry (Jul 5, 2022)

Oh yea and GTK5 may ditch X11....
Can these people make any worse decisions.
First the GTK3 fiasco and now lets ditch Xorg for Wayland.
They remind me of a Devo song. Jerkin back and forth.


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## Phishfry (Jul 5, 2022)

Join in the chant








						Consider dropping the X11 backend (#5004) · Issues · GNOME / gtk · GitLab
					

It is not getting any better, and Wayland is widely available.




					gitlab.gnome.org
				












						Gtk 5 might drop X11 support
					

Linux's Wayland-only future takes a tentative step closer




					www.theregister.com


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## 6502 (Jul 6, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> Librewolf is one of the best options right now, there's a PR waiting.


There is Librewolf for OpenBSD. Does it mean that it cannot run on FreeBSD?


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## Menelkir (Jul 6, 2022)

6502 said:


> There is Librewolf for OpenBSD. Does it mean that it cannot run on FreeBSD?


No, it means that a port is waiting to be revised by a committer.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 6, 2022)

BTW there's also a new player on the horizon. There's a new OS called Serenity OS, which looks like a strange cross between Windows 98 from GUI aesthetics with some *NIX kernel underneath.

This OS has a 2 clause BSD license. It's been in development for roughly 3 years by now.






Anyway, the project lead of that OS created a new HTML rendering engine from scratch, called LibWeb (also BSD licensed). And a browser based on it called Ladybird (see above), which also has been ported to Linux using Qt.

This is WIP and probably still missing a lot, but an interesting development. I mean it rarely happens that somebody bothers to write a new HTML rendering engine from scratch, but here we've got that case.


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## PMc (Jul 8, 2022)

6502 said:


> This sounds bad. Is there similar traffic in Chrome/Edge?


No idea. Why should I care about these - I only wanted to patch firefox to use IPv6 (ULA), and the continuous babble made it hard to find the relevant traffic.


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## astyle (Jul 8, 2022)

PMc said:


> No idea. Why should I care about these - I only wanted to patch firefox to use IPv6 (ULA), and the continuous babble made it hard to find the relevant traffic.


umm... ff doesn't care if it uses IPv4 or IPv6 - it can use either, transparently.


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## Deleted member 67862 (Jul 9, 2022)

I can't wait for LibreWolf to get into ports, if ever..

Other non-Gecko or non-Blink browsers would be nice if uBlock Origin and other simple ways to block modern web garbage were present.


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## PMc (Jul 14, 2022)

astyle said:


> umm... ff doesn't care if it uses IPv4 or IPv6 - it can use either, transparently.


And that is where it gets interesting: which one does it use? (I have 4 and 6 from different providers, with different infrastructure and different routing)

On FreeBSD we do normally steer this behaviour with ip6addrctl(8). There we can control which addresses should be preferred, and also, how the various site-local address ranges should play into this game.
Firefox, however, does not honor this configuration (probably because it is a FreeBSD feature; it appears that linux has something similar, but differently named and structured). Instead, firefox has it's own table, that is hardcoded and compiled into the binary. And that's the thing I wanted to adjust.


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## fernandel (Jul 14, 2022)

https://unixsheikh.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefully.html

I found above site about some browsers when I search something for my favourite Qutebrowser.


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## scottro (Jul 15, 2022)

fernandel thanks for that link. It was interesting reading.


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## fufukauliza (Jul 15, 2022)

Hello everybody,

I read the discussion about the various levels of browser "spying".
I have seen that the ublock origin extension is also referred to.
I'm an average Freebsd user but I've been in cybersecurity for over 15 years and I wanted to ask you a question:
For the sake of privacy, why should I rightfully care which sites Firefox contacts and instead blindly trust an extension that can potentially filter anything within a web page using MITM techniques?
Why is his code freely parsable or what else makes you confident?

Thank you all for the interesting ideas.


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## astyle (Jul 15, 2022)

fufukauliza said:


> Why is his code freely parsable


Kind of needs to be (so that the page can be rendered and displayed properly).  Thing is, you gotta have a really good handle on browser design in order to exploit design features to your liking. Kind of like automotive tire engineering - a tire kind of has to fit the wheels of the car. And all other tire features are built around that simple idea of proper fit. Same with browser design - some things kind of have to be there, otherwise the whole thing is not working right. And that's the very thing that MITM exploits.


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## fufukauliza (Jul 15, 2022)

astyle said:


> Kind of needs to be (so that the page can be rendered and displayed properly).  Thing is, you gotta have a really good handle on browser design in order to exploit design features to your liking. Kind of like automotive tire engineering - a tire kind of has to fit the wheels of the car. And all other tire features are built around that simple idea of proper fit. Same with browser design - some things kind of have to be there, otherwise the whole thing is not working right. And that's the very thing that MITM exploits.



Thanks for your answer but as I see it, extensions with certain features can intercept a lot of data and potentially establish connections to remote servers in the same way as Firefox.
So: why should I be more comfortable using an extension and more worried about using Firefox?
Real privacy maybe you could get by writing an operating system from scratch with its drivers and software while if you want the web pages to be cleaner and more linear ok I agree with you that an extension can help to clean them.

Thanks again.


----------

