Firefox 3.0 beta in Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 & other cribs

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The Firefox comes as a let down in this version.

I use Firefox for ‘n' number of purposes and use a lot of add-ons or extensions; typically fire-ftp, universal uploader, and, MOST importantly, Google toolbar coz i cannot work without by Google bookmarks.

All these extensions are not available for 3.0 version. So Firefox becomes an IE for me.

Solution: I am still using my portable Firefox with wine. Performance is down but at least it's there.

Other points:

  1. System still does not hibernate properly as was the issue with 7.10.
  2. Occasionally, a starting program just dies. Just dies. Just like a car that stops while you are driving it. I have not yet found a pattern in this.
  3. I have been using OOO in XP and always thought that there were several components to it like OOO math, base apart from the word/ppt/excel equivalents. But all these are missing in 8.04. All i get is a writer, impress, calc and draw. or are they hidden somewhere? & why?
  4. K3b, which is a fabulous application, still takes 35 years to open first time in a session... which is strange coz it didn't behave like this in 7.10
  5. Synaptic manager does not show Skype package on search which is painful coz skype site for linux downloads also keeps acting up.
  6. Ctrl+c, ctrl+v etc have stopped working in portable firefox under WINE though they were working perfectly in 7.10

................ overall, i am still to make up my mind if i like this or not.

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15 Responses

  1. Vista Killer says:

    Why you dont use firefox 2 from synaptic?

  2. saurabh says:

    2 reasons:
    1. i used to usually use portable firefox anyway coz i carry my p/w etc with me then.
    2. The point under discussion is inclusion of firefox3.0 ….if i have to use 2.x then i can do that anyway na… this 3.0 beta is kindda before time. Had they given 2.x, we’d have upgraded when 3.0 was stable and ubiquitous.
    SO it’s not what i can use…. i can use win XP also…. but it is the critique of what is bundled 🙂

  3. Murthy says:

    Hi
    I have used “Nightly tester tools” addon to force extensions which are not yet working in FF3.

  4. Brett says:

    The inclusion of FF3 was only done because Firefox ASKED them to do so. Being that it is an LTS version they were asked to include FF3 as they didn’t want to support FF2 for as long as Hardy will be getting updates. Is it a tad early? Yea but is it a justified early release? I think so! Personally I have no problems with FF3 and now that I’m a beta tester for the FF3 foxmarks plugin I have nearly every plugin I need.

  5. Brett says:

    About the “other points” I disagree with EVERY ONE except for #6 and the only reason I disagree is because I don’t want to install wine then install FF under it just to find out if its true or not.

    Point 1:
    My system hibernates beautifully. Just to prove it I’ll press hibernate now. Ok system went down and powered off. I then took the battery out then put it back in and pressed the power button. The system booted up to a password prompt where I entered my password and was presented with my message to continue work on. I think it takes a tiny bit longer to come back from hibernate than from a cold boot but that could also just be me. Most of the hibernation issues that I think people have are hardware driver related and its quite unfair to expect equivalent hardware compatibly in Linux as we have in Windows until we get better manufacturer support. With the recent changes to the procurement specs from Dell, HP and Lenovo I’m hopeful.

    Point 2:
    The only time I’ve seen this in Hardy as of late is when I was editing on a config file that said don’t edit this file by hand. Although once I finally got things right I fixed the problem I was having tethering with my cell phone and now I’m able to type this message up from a cellphone link under Ubuntu 8.04.

    Point 3:
    All you have to do is open synaptic and do a quick search for ooo. Then in that list I saw a package called “openoffice.org” which is not installed by default. A quick gander at the notes tells the user that it includes math and base. So check that and poof you have it all. You had to install Open Office manually in Windows why do you get upset when the lesser used pieces of the office suite aren’t pre included in linux? Why not at least take a look and see if you can find them and add them?

    Point 4:
    I just did an install of K3B through the add/remove programs app in the applications menu. Then ran it. All was 100% loaded inside of 4 seconds for the first load after installing it. Thats faster than the Roxio stuff loads on my workstation running windows at work (and thats a faster computer than my laptop is).

    Point 5: I just opened up synaptic in my Ubuntu 8.04 install and pressed ctrl+f then typed skype into the box and hit enter. Poof 4 packages come up. Skype, skype-common, skype-static, and skype-static-oss. I’m not going to do it but I bet money that if I checked the first one and hit install that I’d have skype on my machine.

    Personally I find most of what you had to say here to be untrue. Are you sure that you’re using synaptic right? When you searched for synaptic what did you get? Nothing? an error?

    The only thing that I’ve seen as a regression from 7.10 is the fact that I can’t get video playback in windowed mode while running Compiz. Now in 7.10 I was using the open source ATI driver and now I’m running the ATI stuff that I installed myself. Granted I get the same operation by using the Ubuntu restricted driver but I’m fully confident that ATI, Compiz and Ubuntu are growing toward an solution on these issues.

  6. saurabh says:

    Dear Brett
    thanks for your comments and detailed analysis. I appreciate the effort. I run my website called http://windows-to-linux.co.cc which is run and meant for ordinary users like me and not for those who are experts. So all my posts will be from ordinary user perspective. Professionally, I am a doctor so i guess you can pardon the tech stupidities 😉
    1. Hibernate: I tested on compaq presario with intel chipset and celeron processor. I’d expect this to be ‘standard’ hardware i suppose 🙂 so not hibernating should not be overlooked in this case. I have screenshots.
    2.This has gone down with me, too. So u r right.
    3.About OOO, I’d say that it’s just a question of being spoon-fed. I wuz wondering about “why” the rest is not there and am not complaining. There’s gotta be a logic behind such decisions where u include one part but not another from a suite.
    4.K3b takes variable time but the fastest i clocked after ur comment was 14 seconds from click on icon. Slowest was 35 today morning. I don’t know why this happens coz it was very fast when i had 7.10. I dunno how to explain.
    5.i have taken a screenshot of synaptic NOT returning any package for skype but i dunno how to put it here 🙂 2ndly, don’t bet ur money dear coz even with 7.10, it had difficulty in installing skype. I had to install it using debian package downloaded from skype site.
    6. U don’t need to install FF under wine dear; it’s an exe… and it works perfectly except for keyboard shortcuts failing on it.
    Lastly i’d say that i’m as much a ubuntu fan as they come. My posts are ‘cribs’ which is like a whining child who wanted a black toy horse but when his dad brought white, he took it but never stops saying that he wanted black.
    I hope u get the spirit 🙂
    saurabh (allbhatias)

  7. Brett says:

    Do me a favor…

    Open a console and run these two commands:

    First:
    sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

    Second:
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

    If you don’t trust me enough to take my word for those commands then go to this URL and read that they are 100% legit from Ubuntu direct!
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

    Once you get that done then try searching for Skype in Synaptic. You’ll also note that that adds the w32codecs, google-earth, and adobe acrobat reader (acroread) (I need the full version of acrobat reader for some secured PDF’s that I deal with) and at times I just prefer it to Evince.

    Anyway once you do that I’d also recommend that you go into your software sources and make sure you have most of all that turned on so that you can at least see it. I’d not recommend turning on the backport and proposed updates yet until you’re a bit more comfortable with it but give these things a try and let me know if it helps you out..

    Sorry for jumping down your throat. I’d just gotten done reading a bunch of people tearing apart the 8.04 LTS and whining about how an LTS should be the stablest thing they’ve ever installed from day one. If thats what they want they should be using another distro as its not the Ubuntu way. Ubuntu users should be more accepting of growing pains and enjoy the fact that they are getting closer to the bleeding edge while they accept these bumps in the road. I commend you on your use of Ubuntu and only hope that you work through these issues so that you may bring others to the community. Linux has come a LONG way since I started with Slakware YEARS ago…

  8. kr0n1x says:

    search for Deng Google Bookmarks in google 🙂 you will find a good extension for FF3

    http://www.balandro.net/dengGB/

  9. ash says:

    Hey saurabh,

    As I read through your list I was thinking that these were little issues. Certainly the firefox beta as it will only be a matter of time for it to be updated to release candidate status and everyone will have their extensions back more or less, as the plugin developers catch up. Then I read your response in which you define “cribs” and realized I was unfamiliar with this usage of the word. Now I’m curious. Where are you (or the word) from? I tried to find this definition/usage but no luck. When I first read it in the title I thought of “cheats” as in “crib notes”. The other slang I’m familiar with is the use where it means “home” or “hangout”, etc.

  10. Rodrigo says:

    I had a similar problem – my firefox add-ons didn’t work afeter the upgrade. I removed firefox 3 and installed firefox 2, and (i don’t know why) the java plugin stopped working.
    I tried remove and install java, and it didn’t work. So, to use the website of my bank, I installed again the firefox 3.
    If I click on the firefox menu applet, the firefox 2 open (without java). If i need to use java, i have to close the firefox 2 window and open directly the firefox 3 (the binary).
    That’s weird!

  11. Brett says:

    If you have one firefox open then clicking on the icons to load either firefox will simply load a new window of the currently open version. This is why you have to close all instances in order to switch versions.

  12. saurabh says:

    1. ASH: I am from India. Crib is used as a slang for whining or complaining (e.g.employees have been cribbing about low pay rise this year) 🙂

    2.Rodrigo: same here. My bank site has been acting up because of this too 🙁 but as everyone says, it’s a matter of time perhaps.

    3.kr0n1x : thanks for deng. I can dispense now with the g-toolbar.
    4.Brett: thanks for guidance
    5.Murthy: For the life of me, i tried the nightly stuff; couldn’t make head or tail of it 🙂 I ain’t geeky enuff, i blv :-)…

  13. Hey! Saurabh,

    The first thing I tried after installing 8.04 was hibernate and yay!!! it worked. FYI it doesn’t used to work because of ATI driver issues, but now in 8.04 it works with ATI drivers and as well as open source drivers.

    Firefox 3 was a surprise for me too, but then I realized that when it will be out as stable I will download it anyway, so why not use it from now on and be part of community testing thing. Its not that bad and works fine for me except that I am unable to open the 3rd FF window (just a test), but again who needs more windows when we have tabs ;).

    The other thing was Rhythm player was able to sync music to iPod without corrupting it.

    And last but not least, my mplayer doesn’t crash like it used to on 7.10.

    8.04 rocks for me uptil now, although I have lost my Google Browser Sync, but there are offcourse workarounds.

  14. saurabh says:

    ok guys
    here i am with another problem 🙂

    my music players are playing all types of music after downloading gstreamer codecs etc.
    BUT
    i had burnt two vcd using Nero in windows and they play well on my cd-player.BUT no movie player is able to play it on 8.04 (Mplayer, Movie player?totem, gxine) so obviously i need some piece of code deficient.
    The CD has avseq.dat files which were converted frm AVIs by Nero
    Any Ideas??

    UPDATE ON HIBERNATION: when i hibernate, the black screen appears saying- “system failed to suspend, error -32”
    BUT, (and that’s a big but), when i boot up again, it comes out of hibernation. This is a latest development. On day one the GUI had reported failure which it doesn’t do now.

  15. rico says:

    Saurabh, vcd do not play in ubuntu (i had same issue in 7.10), i fixed it by following this:
    http://alternativenayk.wordpress.com/2007/01/20/playing-vcds-on-ubuntu-linux-how-to/

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