
Mozilla quietly kills Firefox 64-bit for Windows - Reltair
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/22/mozilla-quietly-kills-firefox-64-bit-for-windows-despite-an-alleged-50-of-testers-using-it/
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mburns
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4817574>

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GvS
I use Pale Moon 64-bit, custom-built and optimized Firefox clone:
<http://www.palemoon.org/>

~~~
mylittlepony
...for Windows Operating Systems.

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robin_reala
Firefox is natively 64bit on Linux and OSX already.

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mylittlepony
So? I replied to a comment about Pale Moon (not Firefox, which I'm obviously
using), so you might wanna take your downvote back.

From their website: _"A custom-built and optimized Firefox-based browser for
Windows"_

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bifrost
This just reeks of dumb. Seriously guys, support 64 bit platforms or perish.

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Negitivefrags
They do support 64 bit platforms. With 32 bit binaries.

If you have no need for more than 3gb of memory per process then 32 bit is a
great choice. The pointers being half size is a non-trivial memory saving.

I'd be happy if windows would let you use something like the x32 build target
that linux got recently for extra registers though.

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alexkus
I'd rather not have to pollute a pure 64-bit install with a whole bunch of
32-bit libraries to run just one 32-bit app though. It's adds even more
headache keeping those patched and up to date.

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ibotty
remember that we are talking windows here. which libraries do you have to
patch for firefox (i.e. those they do not ship and which are not in the core
win os)?

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PommeDeTerre
Mozilla seems, at least to me, to be becoming more and more like the GNOME
project. It's projecting a constant stream of unusual, if not outright bad,
ideas and actions.

The Firefox version numbering debacle, including the constant problems it
caused for extensions, was just plain silly.

Then there's Firefox Mobile. I've always found it very inferior to the other
commonly-available mobile browsers. Aside from trying it out briefly, there
was no reason to continue using it. This is probably the same for others, and
likely why its uptake basically hasn't happened at all.

Earlier this year they seem to have withdrawn their interest in Thunderbird,
which is by far one of their better offerings.

More recently, there's been a lot said about Firefox OS. There's a very good
chance that this will become an unused, uninspiring, generally-ignored
product, much like Firefox Mobile.

And now there's this decision.

Redirecting effort away from applications that are actually used, like Firefox
and Thunderbird, toward things that clearly have little to no future, like
Firefox Mobile or Firefox OS, just doesn't make sense.

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nanook
> things that clearly have little to no future, like Firefox Mobile or Firefox
> OS, just doesn't make sense.

Firefox OS has to be the most exciting thing they're doing. Why does it not
have a future?

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trendnet
Because a lot of people don't give a bear about Firefox OS.

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beatgammit
A lot of people do.

It isn't officially released yet, so of course it's not going to be as popular
as a released product. Android wasn't popular until acquired and pushed by
Google.

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sabret00the
Who does? Tell me of the millions and millions of users out there waiting in
anticipation of Firefox OS? Firefox decide to kill off around half of their
Nightly (read most diehard users) and expect to carry that good faith over to
what? Firefox OS? Are you going to convince the 30 million people that bought
a Samsung Galaxy S3 that all of a sudden, the brand they bought into isn't
actually important and that they should jump on the Firefox OS train? It's
unrealistic.

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lnanek2
I used to use mainly Chrome and Firefox, but after moving to Windows 8 (I have
to because I write some Windows 8 stuff) 64-bit, Firefox often hangs after
opening, hangs after opening tabs, hangs after loading pages, etc.. I switched
to using Safari as browser B, and I don't think that is even still official
for Windows...

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StavrosK
Why not Chrome?

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lnanek2
I do use Chrome. I need a second concurrent browser for various reasons.

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StavrosK
Ah, I misunderstood, thanks. I'd recommend Opera!

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beatgammit
+1 Opera is so underrated.

Posted from Opera.

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simonster
There was never a 64-bit version of Firefox. There were 64-bit Nightly builds,
which aren't even branded as Firefox. Running them because you wanted a 64-bit
version of Firefox would have been a silly thing to do, because, as unreleased
software, they also crash significantly more frequently than released Firefox
versions, which almost certainly would have killed any productivity increase
from running a 64-bit version of Firefox.

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JeremyMorgan
The big question is, why won't 64 bit catch on? Too new? I had a 64 bit chip
10 years ago and most of you probably did too. Too expensive?

It's a good question and it probably comes down to programmers and habit.
Multi core processing and async/multithreading are finally starting to take
hold but optimizing for a 64 bit bus still seems like an afterthought.

I am asking seriously because I don't have a definitive answer, but why is it
just not catching on?

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byuu
Never underestimate human apathy. A super majority of the world does not care
for progress, if it means having to change even the most nominal of habits.
Not even for sometimes massive benefits. In fact, a great many individuals
will become _extremely_ vocal if you try and force something as tiny as
"picking one file extension for a file type instead of using two like we have
in the past."

The only way things advance are when walls are finally hit. With 16-bit, this
was trivial: the limitations were crippling. It'll get there with 32-bit, as
applications begin to crash with the ~2GB per process memory limitations on
Windows, and PCs continually appear with far more than 8GB of RAM available.
But I'd say we are probably 5-10 years off from a point where we could
consider deploying a 64-bit only application without losing users.

~~~
gurkendoktor
What you say is often true. Take Windows XP vs Windows 7; Windows 7 is miles
ahead in the security department, that _should_ be a killer reason for people
to upgrade. Or IPv4 vs IPV6 for obvious reasons.

But 64-bit has none of these big advantages in practice. Battery life on OS X
was _worse_ right after the switch.[1] I have downloaded Podcasts a year
before iTunes ran in 64-bit mode and they stopped working with the switch
(nothing obscure - early Railscasts episodes). Many perfectly fine machines
have been marked obsolete by Apple because their processors or graphics
drivers weren't 64bit. - Windows has been a mess for me too: the 64-bit ODBC
control panel is in system32 and the 32-bit ODBC control panel is in WoW64.[2]
Because there are no fat binaries, casual users suddenly need to know which
version of a Windows program to download. - So there is a lot of friction that
needs to be outweighed. For _what_? - If Firefox wants to escape the 2GB
barrier, the wiser choice might be to use one process per tab, as other
browsers do.

If you look at the first and last sentence of your posting, you are basically
accusing people of apathy because they keep using their 32-bit computers.

[1] [http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/104687/64-bit-safari-
reduce...](http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/104687/64-bit-safari-reduces-
battery-life-by-45) (might also be caused by API changes that Apple has tied
to the 64-bit platform) [2]
[http://robertoschiabel.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/windows-x64-...](http://robertoschiabel.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/windows-x64-32bit-
odbc-vs-64bit-odbc/)

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byuu
64-bit binaries net me a 15% performance increase with my application.
Obviously it can vary per application, and depends on where the bottlenecks
are. It's been my experience that x86->amd64 is often beneficial: the x86 is
so register starved that it makes up for the larger pointers, and most of the
latter is mitigated through 32-bit relative instructions. Now PowerPC, sure.
32-bit PPC code does tend to run faster than 64-bit from my experience.

The other advantage is being able to utilize more than 2GB of memory per
process. The reason to favor pure 64-bit is to get rid of all that extra
32-bit compatibility code. WoW64, in this case, or ia32libs on Linux.

Whether you're pragmatic about it or not, 32-bit will eventually go away. I'd
prefer to see it sooner rather than for it to drag on for decades like IPv6.

And yeah, WoW64 is a clusterfuck. Basically, Microsoft wanted to make porting
32-bit applications as easy as possible. Since some applications may have been
hardcoded to System32, they stuck the 64-bit libraries there, and put the
32-bit ones in WoW64. They also cloned the registry so you actually have
32-bit and 64-bit keys (see KEY_WOW64_32KEY flag.) What can I say? Microsoft's
always had a thing for rigid backward compatibility at the expense of common
sense design. But they are still the market leader, so I guess they know a
thing or two :/

I don't care for your Firefox example. What if one single tab needs >2GB, like
say a really high-end WebGL game? What about other applications? People found
similar tricks for getting more memory in 16-bit processes too (far pointers),
but we aren't still using Win16.

I'm accusing people of apathy because they resist change simply because it's
change. I get being pragmatic, but at some point we have to cut ties with the
past. Even Microsoft understands this, as you can no longer run 16-bit
applications on the latest versions of Windows.

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gurkendoktor
No doubts about the advantages of x86_64, I would insist on it in a new
computer for virtualisation and encoding DVDs. But many people don't do much
more on their computers than they can do on their highly restricted armv7
gadgets. Desktop software has reached a plateau IMHO, I don't think we can
extrapolate from the 16->32 bit change. Gamers and IT professionals are a
completely different beast of course.

How do you know that people hate change? Has anyone ever said "no, I don't
want to run a 64-bit program, I've always been a 32-bit person"? People have
to endure the crap in my grandparent post and that is what they hate and
resist, especially if there is no tangible benefit to it. SSDs have entered
the mainstream market much later and I have seen nothing but praise for them.
SSDs are change too, often a painful one for a running system, but they solve
an obvious problem.

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mtgx
And here I was thinking they must be already working on the 64 bit for ARMv8
and Android for a 2014 release.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
This is talking specially about 64-bit on windows, related to windows-specific
problems. Linux and osx have fully-functioning 64-bit versions, so this won't
hinder ARM 64-bit.

