Goodbye Abrowser, Long Live Abrowser
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I wanted to mention that Rubén has been made co-maintanier of GNU IceCat: https://gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ - This should now mean that IceCat releases keep up with the upstream releases, much like Abrowser does in Trisquel.
This is really compliementary work: Since Rubén is already maintaining Abrowser via scripts it's not much extra work to also take on GNU IceCat. They come from the same place and we're just talking differences in branding.
That brings me to the heart of this post. Since Abrowser & GNU IceCat are so similiar the thought is that it doesn't make sense to duplicate effort and maintain two forks of Firefox.
So, the decision yesterday was that Trisquel 7 will ship with GNU IceCat and Abrowser will be retired but really it's the same browser with different branding. Goodbye, Abrowser - Long live Abrowser under its new name of GNU IceCat.
(Trisquel 6 will continue to have Abrowser to avoid any potential problems from backporting the changes.)
Oh, I should probably add in that I don't know when new IceCat releases will start appearing on ftp.gnu.org. I imagine that Rubén will need to some time to settle in to his new role as co-maintainer first.
Oh and one other thing I forgot to ask...
Are they planning on liberating Thunderbird as well or are we left to finding another client or sticking to webmail?
JXSELF
According to the web site, GNU IceCat is currently being maintained by Loic J. Duros. I'm guessing some updates needs to be done.
That's a good decision. I assume the packaging concerns that Ruben had, when the topic of using GNU IceCat for Trisquel was raised, will be addressed and fixed.
Just a few days ago on that forum, I was lamenting the fact that GNU IceCat was lagging a bit behind the regular Firefox releases, thus lacking some security fixes. I am glad to learn that I will be able to recommend it with no caveats as soon as it is up-to-date!
Will Trisquel's GNU IceCat ship with GNU LibreJS, like GNU IceCat currently does? GNU LibreJS prevents nonfree code from running, which a good thing, but at the price of breaking nearly every website :(.
Its good that there is no more duplicated effort between the browsers. As for LibreJS, it is true that it breaks a lot of sites and the methods that it uses are not ideal. In the past I have talked about how I preferred the whitelisting feature of NoScript instead.
If some scripts are known to be free software (like jQuery or Modernizr), then they should be whitelisted and have the option to run by default as long as they come from valid sources.
Jquery is whitelisted, depending on the cdn. I think we should focus more on getting free JS tagged with the appropriate licenses, which is a better solution than whitelisting.
"I assume the packaging concerns that Ruben had, when the topic of using GNU IceCat for Trisquel was raised, will be addressed and fixed."
Yes.
"Will Trisquel's GNU IceCat ship with GNU LibreJS, like GNU IceCat currently does?"
Yes. My understanding is that the version people download from ftp.gnu.org will have it enabled by default but the version in Trisquel will have it disabled by default.
JXSELF
My following question is a bit off the topic, obviously GNU/LINUX BROWSERS is a more favorable output and much better and safer browser.
But, for those that are and still using Windows based browsers, What options do they have?, since Mozilla sold their soul to the DRM Devils.
What else could you use that is windows but a safe browser?
In Mozilla, the good plug-in's could be disabled and made non-compatible at anytime. Then, the famous antivirus,firewalls for windows.
If you still using Windows based browser.
Per say: Mozilla, I force my browser to use HTTPS:// example plug-in HTTPS everywhere,
ABE plug in to counter those marketing cookies.
Does that mean all the windows base browsing are just there, easy prey for those corporate marketing preying eyes?
Any recommendations.
It seems to me,in the near future, there will be only 2 kind of browsers the Libre and proprietary.
> What options do they have?
The first would be to move to free software. Trisquel would be a good choice.
For free software on Windows there are some options, like:
https://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html
> It seems to me,in the near future, there will be only 2 kind of browsers
> the Libre and proprietary.
Um, isn't that what we already have? Any given program ultimately fits into the category of being free or proprietary.
JXSELF
Thank You for the info.
I do not understand LibreJS. It has flagged items on the FSF's website.
Detecting if a script is free/libre or trivial is a difficult task. More specifically, detecting if something is free/libre depends on very precise checks and cooperation from the servers distributing the scripts, and detecting triviality is unreliable. LibreJS has to lean toward blocking free/libre scripts when it fails; otherwise, it would let proprietary code run at some points, and that would subvert the whole purpose of LibreJS.
IceCat is a much better name :)
I hope the KDE patches get included at some point.
What is the license of the Abrowser logo? I really like the look of it, but I've never noticed any license for it. It's probably in the source, but I wouldn't know where to find it.
Oh, never mind, I won't waste your time asking newbie questions. I'll find it myself.
Okay, another (sort of) newbie question: I can't find the source for Abrowser. If I try to download it through the source link on this page (http://packages.trisquel.info/toutatis-updates/abrowser) I get a 404. On this page, (http://packages.trisquel.info/toutatis/abrowser) instead of a link, it says "Download Source Package: Not Found."
The packages website is broken. The easiest way to get the source is with "apt-get source firefox". Don't use sudo. If you want download links:
Toutatis:
http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_29.0+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.2+6.0.1trisquel21.dsc
http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_29.0+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.2+6.0.1trisquel21.tar.gz
Belenos:
http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_29.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.2+7.0trisquel21.dsc
http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_29.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.2+7.0trisquel21.tar.gz
It seems to be working now that I didn't use sudo.
Good browser. But, that's it. New browser, new identity.
I am a translator!
Okay, another (sort of) newbie question: I can't find the source for Abrowser.
Just run "apt-get source abrowser".
That's awesome! \o/
That is great, it did seem like a waste of time for there to be many identical browsers which did the same thing. And I agree that GNU Icecat is a better name.
I am a member!
This is really good news - I've always thought that it was a wasted effort maintaining both Abrowser and IceCat.
Now that IceCat will be kept more up-to-date maybe it will start to trickle down into other distributions, possibly replacing IceWeasel one day? That would be pretty awesome - if all the Free distributions could standardise around IceCat.
I doubt that the Debian Project will remove Iceweasel, as they don't seem to see any problems.
This is excellent news! Any word on whether GNU Icecat might also appear in Parabola at some point? I am really looking forward to a Firefox variant with all of the DRM bits removed.
GNU IceCat 24.0 is in the Libre Repository of the Parabola Package Database and installs easily with Pacman.
Brilliant news!
I entered
'sudo apt-get install icecat'
and it's output:
'Package icecat is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source'
How do I go about adding the repo to install icecat?
I'm using Trisquel 7.0 amd64.
Thanks,
Steve
Hmm, the sources seem to be down.
Thanks icarolongo & Gereon. I forgot Parabola already had Icecat. I'm switching to it momentarily since Iceweasel-libre has the Australis UI and Icecat doesn't (yet).
great news!
to join the efforts helps the free community to grow strong, and the "IceCat" branding also feels more appealing when I tell others what browser I use.
I am a member!
Does GNU IceCat have a Windows and Mac version?
It didn't look like it from the mirror. I think it would be beneficial to have a fully-free version of Firefox without the DRM and proprietary plugins available to our friends who are stuck in non-free OSes.
I was very happy to see a renewed emphasis on IceCat. With recent developments, GNU needs to be in the browser game. IceCat has a catchy name and can be a steady proponent for freedom in the web, especially since the W3C and Mozilla are busy tasting the dark side.
Probably there just aren't Windows and Mac versions because no one has volunteered to compile binaries for those systems.
There's an unofficial IceWeasel for Windows - it's based on
Firefox 3, though.
Sorry to ressurect this post, but what is the status on this? I don't see any news on gnuzilla site regarding updates or something.
If you haven't noticed, IceCat version 30 is available in Trisquel 6....
>If you haven't noticed, IceCat version 30 is available in Trisquel 6....
I don't see anything new (could it be related to the fact that I use the mirror.fsf.org mirror?):
ben@vegas:~$ sudo apt-cache search icecat
abrowser - Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla
ben@vegas:~$ sudo apt-get install icecat
Lecture des listes de paquets... Fait
Construction de l'arbre des dépendances
Lecture des informations d'état... Fait
Le paquet icecat est un paquet virtuel fourni par :
abrowser 19.0+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.2+6.0trisquel4 [Pas de version candidate]
E: Le paquet « icecat » n'a pas de version susceptible d'être installée
Oh yeah I forgot it's not happened yet. If you want to try out IceCat 30 on Trisquel 6 edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list on your system and add the line:
deb http://devel.trisquel.info/icecat/toutatis toutatis main
(Notice it's pointing to the devel machine so this isn't something to keep around for a while.)
Then proceed to update your package manager and enjoy IceCat 30 in advance of it getting into the main Trisquel repository.
I tried, it looks very nice, I like it! Thnks
Think I haven't made myself clear enough. I do know there are new versions in trisquel (although I mainly use Dragora) My questions is: why Ruben's name doesn't appear on gnuzilla website as comantainer? Also gnuzilla ftp doesn't have icecat 30 yet. It seems like a trisquel exclusive for now, I just wanted to know what is the status, not if I can donwload it by any means, it should be more visible so more people can be aware of this wonderful news.
Best regards.
It is indeed strange the website has not been updated yet. Ruben Rodriguez was announced as the new maintainer of IceCat there: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-spotlight-june-2014
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