I normally fast track security updates (especially Firefox, Thunderbird and Chromium) to all branches as much as I can. Occasionally some packages can be pushed to all branches as is, however sometimes they need to be rebuilt to match the library versions per branch. Think of each Manjaro branch as a separate version of Manjaro.
Lately @philm has been doing some manual juggling with testing and stable updates. I’ve held off lately as testing and stable updates have been more frequent as of late.
However, now that there may not be as much juggling involved, I will resume my normal fast tracking shortly.
then you are not helpless when breaking system by jumping between repos.
If the package from unstable will not install in stable
– this may be called a “security-functiuon” to the sake of beginners.
Personal: are you a psycho doctor or expert (psy) customer?
Not sure where you got this information, but firefox needs to be built against the branch that needs it, because of the nss libraries at different versions in different branches.
When the next stable release takes so long and does not follow usual 2 weekly-ish cadence,
I expect there are new ISOs being polished for release after packages are released to stable
Now I know why Flatpak exists. I installed Firefox Flatpak and the current version is running well so far. And since Flatpak also offers sandboxing, I even have another added value. And if the information on Flathub is correct, the package comes directly from Mozilla.
Switched to Flatpak too. Not bad, it also works with webapp-manager. Plus: with Flatseal it’s super easy setting Wayland mode, without environment variables or startup script
I am rather new on my way with Manjaro - and I like the rolling-release management and the large choice of applications.
Now I am surprised about the rather long testing time especially for Firefox and a bit less for Thunderbird.
As far as I have understood there were struggling security leaks reported for both.
While other distros - Debian forks and Arch forks - have updated within 24- 48 hours Firefox to 104 and sent a miniupdate meanwhile (archbased one), Manjaro still stays testing since some weeks.
As far as I remember Mozilla released Firefox version 104 about 22th of August.
And yes, I have read some threads in this forum dealing with updates in general and more specific with Firefox.
But contrary to the posted intentions there now some weeks have gone meanwhile after Mozilla’s releases.
Are there special problems this time?
Please let me emphasize my remarks should not be understood as a critical review. I am thankful to the team for this very nice distro.They do a great job! It’s only a question for better understanding last based on my concern that striking webconnected unpatched applications like browsers and emailapps could threaten the security of the whole system.
Would it be possible and applicable to patch and test them with greater preference?
If I understood some posts right in some threads here this holds to be the declared intention of the team.
I would appreciate very much your points of view and assessment.
I’m new here also (little over a month). And I wondered about it too. Meanwhile I switched to manjaros testing branch on my laptop, to see how close security updates were delivered there and how stable it is.
For me that’s fine, and maybe I switch my main PC to testing too and my laptop to unstable.
And above in this thread I read about the flatpak option of firefox, that sounds good. I didn’t like the force to snap-firefox, when I still was running ubuntu, but I like the flatpaks more and more. So this would be a solution for firefox and thunderbird.
I would like to use FF 104.x, that comes as a flatpak, but after installing it I discovered it ignores the current (103.x) default config folder in .mozilla/firefox, and creates a whole new default config folder, and I am unable to import anything other than the 103.x Bookmarks. Everything else needs to be reinstalled (addons) or reset up.
As a consequence I am unable to access stored logins, addons and other settings from prior versions of FF.
Im using Manjaro (Linux) since 2 years now and i saw the Standalone Firefox Updates atleast 4 times, sometimes 2-3 days after stable release… maybe its related to a hotfix update? Maybe a Hotfix dont need to build against the branch?