

Your Linux browser is too old - pjbrunet

Lately I have nag messages everywhere I go: &quot;Your browser is too old.&quot; If you&#x27;re wondering, I have Debian Wheezy. (Going to check if I have all the backports.)<p>In general, do you think Linux has trouble keeping browsers up to date? Do Ubuntu &amp; Fedora folks have this problem too?
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wmantly
This is from using Debian stable, and normal. Debian has 4 "branches"

1\. Old stable, the previous stable version and only receives security
updates.

2\. Stable, the current stable version. There is a massive amount of stability
testing and security hardening that go into ever package before its allowed in
this branch. This is usually a very long process and the packages are usually
old.

3\. Testing, This is where packages live while they are being tested for
stable. This branch may be broken, but is generally working during the release
cycle, and may not receive security updates in timely manner. 4\. Un-stable,
This is bleeding and mostly in broken state...

During the release cycle, packages are selected and brought closer and closer
to 'stable' and move though the branches. At a certain time, the package
version are frozen in a feature freeze, and are not allowed to have feature
updates, only stability and security hardening. When are the packages are
ready, the debian team releases alpha and beta builds to test everything.
Then, and only then is a new stable released.

If every thing had the Q&A of debian, nothing would crash, but everything
would be old.

This is the reason why so many people use one of the many distro based up of
debian testing. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and many more are based off of testing,
with newer packages and there own feature freeze. The ubuntu cycle tries work
like clock work every 6 months and debian has more of "when its ready" mind
set.

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glandium
Hi, Debian Iceweasel maintainer here.

Debian Wheezy currently has version 31.3 (ESR) and will soon get 31.4 through
stable-updates. Stable-security already has that version. In case you wonder
what ESR is: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/)

Generally speaking, Debian stable always receives the last ESR versions these
days, except at the end of an ESR cycle, where Mozilla actually releases two
ESR versions. So, for instance, at the end of life of ESR 24, Mozilla released
both 24.8 and 31.0, and Debian stable received 24.8. The next update was to
31.1.

I can understand nagging for very old versions, but Web sites nagging about
current ESR versions are being rude.

If you are interested in fresher Iceweasel backports, check out
[http://mozilla.debian.net/](http://mozilla.debian.net/).

And if you'd rather have the Firy logo instead of the icy one, and know how to
build Debian packages, just download the Iceweasel sources, and build with the
following environment variable set: PRODUCT_NAME=firefox.

~~~
pjbrunet
Just realized the problem, I had been launching Iceweasel from Openbox instead
of the CLI.

Somehow obmenu is launching an older version of Iceweasel (version 13) and I
never noticed till now :-/

If I launch "iceweasel" from a terminal I get version 31.

Oops!

------
csirac2
You should have iceweasel 31 according to
[https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/iceweasel](https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/iceweasel)

Which websites refuse to work?

You could always just add the linux mint repositories and install the real
firefox that way. [http://superuser.com/questions/322376/how-to-install-the-
rea...](http://superuser.com/questions/322376/how-to-install-the-real-firefox-
on-debian) is old but the instructions in the top-rated answer still work.

~~~
pjbrunet
I upgraded to Wheezy yesterday, I thought everything was up to date. I had
"deb [http://mozilla.debian.net/](http://mozilla.debian.net/) wheezy-backports
iceweasel-release" in my sources.list. My Iceweasel user agent at this moment
says "Firefox/13.0"!

Nothing refused to work, just nag messages on various websites. But Firebug,
the highest I could go was something like version 1.5 and the older versions
starting junking up my context menu. Figured it was time to upgrade and start
a Hacker News rant ;-)

~~~
csirac2
Make sure you have wheezy/security as well. The vuln tracker often indicates
issues fixed in wheezy/security iceweasel packages a lot more quickly than
wheezy.

------
mattkrea
> Do Ubuntu & Fedora folks have this problem too?

I do not. I have to imagine Iceweasel is fairly old at this point considering
Debian is usually behind whereas Fedora and Ubuntu are closer to bleeding edge
--in fact thats a large part of why Iceweasel exists[0].

0: [https://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel](https://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel)

------
thekevan
I do. I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 because I have been too lazy to do the upgrade
properly.

I get those messages if I am using FF. It's on 29 and I even tried to do the
"old version" hack but it didn't work for me.

Chrome has, for some reason, decided to can upgraded to the current version--
41. (I might be running beta, I can't remember.)

------
robocat
I check browser stats occasionally, and a high percentage of "obsolete"
browser users come from browsers with a navigator.platform of Linux. E.g.
obsolete Firefox (3.5), old Chromium etc etc.

For Firefox we have a nag show at top of browser window for a few seconds if
you are not on current ESR - [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/faq/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/faq/) \- the nag is there because it isn't worth our
time testing obsolete versions for a handful of users (single page
JavaScript/Ajax app, so new features can introduce breaks. in old browsers).

------
andrewchambers
Some websites just assume your browser is old because it doesn't match chrome
or firefox exactly, even though you have a perfectly fine browser.

------
SamReidHughes
You can use an up-to-date backport. See
[http://mozilla.debian.net/](http://mozilla.debian.net/)

------
pjbrunet
Maybe it's because I have Debian stable.

At this moment I'm upgrading Debian to Jessie which according to this
[https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/](https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/)
is still "testing".

Typically I would just wait for the next stable version of Debian but for web
development I want to get the latest Firebug.

~~~
pjbrunet
Maybe I could still get Aurora with Wheezy? No idea what version Aurora is...

[http://mozilla.debian.net/](http://mozilla.debian.net/)

I have been down this road before, it's just a pain.

~~~
csirac2
The mint packaging of the real Mozilla Firefox (tm) works for me, on jessie at
least.

------
Teichopsia
I had the same nagging issue so I went ahead and installed the real firefox
after some trial and error. Now, the browser itself gets notifications for an
update but gets stuck on the downloading. Still trying to figure this out.

------
johnny22
fedora always releases the newest firefox within a week of the actual firefox
release.

