Iceweasel 5.0 in experimental
I just pushed Iceweasel 5.0 to Debian experimental. Why not unstable, some will ask? Well, because we still need to give some time after a first notice before breaking plenty of packages (Thanks to Julien Cristau for the MBF, by the way).
I also discontinued the Iceweasel 4.0 backport for Squeeze, as Iceweasel 4.0 won't be receiving security updates. Speaking of security updates, 3.6.18 was also made available on mozilla.debian.net for Wheezy, Squeeze and Lenny. However, I still have to backport the necessary patches to 3.5 in Squeeze and 3.0 in Lenny. My real life schedule wasn't compatible with the security release schedule, so I got late on the security backport train.
In the coming weeks, there will also be some additional changes to the mozilla.debian.net repository, but I'll give more details when that happens.
2011-06-22 02:41:30+0900
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2011-06-22 12:02:49+0900
when we can expect deb package of icedove 5.0 (beta)? now i’m using thunderbird tar.gz
2011-06-22 14:34:18+0900
Great that you quick to jump on it!
2011-06-22 16:24:05+0900
That was quick. Thank you.
2011-06-23 17:21:10+0900
It’s kinda funny to see such a great response in packaging with how quick they are done, but see sid still contain such old stuff :-)
2011-06-24 04:53:49+0900
Andrew: what part of the first paragraph did you not understand?
2011-06-24 11:15:11+0900
Could you also build the iceweasel-l10n packages for your repository? It’s unfortunate that using these packages means losing translations.
2011-06-24 21:47:19+0900
+1 for adding the iceweasel-l10n packages to the repository.
2011-06-25 17:07:45+0900
I only see 4 in experimental…?
2011-06-26 04:42:24+0900
Looks like 5 is held up in NEW, thats why I didn’t see it.
2011-06-26 11:33:50+0900
[…] to themozilla.debian.net [18] repository, but I'll give more details when that happens". 17 : http://glandium.org/blog/?p=2108 18 : http://mozilla.debian.net/ Further interviews —————— There has been two further […]
2011-06-28 09:30:30+0900
+1 for adding the iceweasel-l10n packages to the repository, many of my familymembers are not fluent in English.
2011-06-29 08:22:32+0900
You can install as an extension language:
for 64-bit
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/5.0/linux-x86_64/xpi/
or
for 32-bit
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/5.0/linux-i686/xpi/
if there is any difference.
2011-06-29 11:19:39+0900
xpi is an OK alternative. But if you have lot’s of users, a deb-package is better. I know how to install xpi as a global extension, but still nothing beats a deb-package.
2011-06-29 11:19:59+0900
oh, and thanks for the link to the xpi files.
2011-07-08 17:10:10+0900
Mike, I understand from this blog post that you’re the one and only person who ports security update to older Debian release.
What are your plan with the new rapid release schedule ?
I see several possibilities :
– it’s not decided yet.
– you will not port fixes anymore, updates to stable debian release will update to the latest stable firefox in debian releases that include a Firefox newer than 3.6
– you keep on porting fixes, so the Firefox release that’s gets integrated inside Debian Stable becomes in effect a LTS version of Firefox. In that last case, I think it would be a big win for you to try to synchronize with some other people who have the same needs to mutualize the effort.
2011-07-08 18:44:41+0900
jmdesp: As far as I know, only RedHat supports older versions, and that’s only for the Gecko 1.8.1 code base. Debian might well be alone supporting 3.0 and 3.5. I will try my best to support them as long as possible and desirable (3.0 is not going to be supported after Lenny EOL).
2026-10-24 13:51:15+0900
Definitely the right call keeping it in experimental for now. A major jump like 5.0 always churns through reverse dependencies, so giving maintainers some breathing room before it hits unstable saves a lot of breakage.
I do a fair bit of cross-browser interface testing on Debian, and whenever I need quick mockups or icon assets to check rendering behavior, GPT Image 2.5 is the AI image editor I use. It doesn’t get every revision right on the first try, but being able to tweak a single UI element while leaving the surrounding frame untouched saves me from having to rebuild test assets from scratch.
2026-10-29 13:33:50+0900
Experimental first with an MBF ahead of the breakage makes sense for a jump of this size — it’s a good reminder that a Debian upload is as much about the archive and its dependencies as about the browser itself. Thanks for the notice.
Unrelated to packaging, but waiting out a transition is exactly when I end up reaching for small tools instead of doing anything useful. Tiny Desk AI at https://tiny-deskai.org/ has been the one I keep around for little bits of writing while things settle.
2026-10-30 19:49:09+0900
The MBF explanation makes sense, but I hadn’t realized the 3.5/3.0 backports were still pending—hope your schedule clears up for those security patches. I was playing with an ai flyer maker earlier and it struck me how much faster these browser releases are getting compared to the old 3.6 days.