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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What the heck is this trash shipping with firefox? about:compat (self.linux)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by mvirts to c/[email protected]

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Visit about:compat in your firefox. I find it insane that these exist.

Edit: I've learned that this is part of the webcompat system addon developed by Mozilla and other contributors. I see why this is beneficial default behavior, since FF has no chance of getting enough market share to matter more if things are broken.

However, this behavior is too intrusive for my taste. For example this injection: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/8a4afb4d34f8/browser/extensions/webcompat/injections/js/bug1472075-bankofamerica.com-ua-change.js is basically just to silence annoying user reports.

Also, Every site FF pretends to be a different UA on is artificially reducing FF market share data.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

K, teachable moment maybe.

How complicated do you think a web browser is? Out of the box there is support for 30 years of web and file systems, support for socket types that will never be commissioned again and a pipeline to every native media format.

It's complicated, it's essentially an OS. with perfect backward compatability. (Mostly)

I have an increasing amount of bile for the Mozilla Corp, but if you're on Lemmy you probably noticed corporations don't make the best decisions for you... My question is how many of the options do you see in about:config do you think chrome and safari don't show you?

Mostly to their benefit I'd add, except if they set them maliciously you'll never know.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Agreed. To expand on your OS comment, SerenityOS is an operating system that was largely written by one guy. Then he started a web browser for it ( Ladybird ).

Despite having a lot more help on the browser, he expects it to take longer. It is very clear that a modern web browser is a much bigger undertaking than the OS.

A browser engine is such a significant investment that even Microsoft sees it as too much effort. They dropped their internal engine to switch to Blink ( Chromium ).