<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10577">To answer your first question, the most recent web-site was someplace doing a survey about my doctor visit. However, some banking web-sites have also complained.</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10675" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10680" dir="ltr">But, I have uncovered a more interesting aspect of the problem.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10629">Looking at my edited /etc/apt/sources.list, I believe I once installed Jessie from CD. But that line was commented out.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10630">The active lines are like:</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10681" dir="ltr"> deb <a id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10631" href="http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/debian/" target="_blank">http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/debian/ </a>testing main contrib non-free<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10632"> deb-src <a id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10633" href="http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/debian/" target="_blank">http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/debian/ </a>testing main contrib non-free<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10634"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10635">So I thought I have been on testing for a long time. <br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10636"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10637">Also
as stated in my original email, Firefox is version 45. According the
Debian package search, even Wheezy has 52. <br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10699" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10785" dir="ltr">bviously something is not
getting updated. But at least it is called Firefox not IceApe.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10638"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10724" class="qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div style="display: block;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10728" class="yahoo_quoted"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10727" style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10726" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10725" dir="ltr"> <font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1529551907547_10729" face="Arial" size="2"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> conspire@linuxmafia.com <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Wednesday, June 20, 2018 11:29 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [conspire] How to update packages when Deb is behind?<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br>Quoting Paul Zander (<a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:paulz@ieee.org" href="mailto:paulz@ieee.org">paulz@ieee.org</a>):<br clear="none"><br clear="none">> Generally, Debian and apt-get is a good way to install features, but<br clear="none">> not always.<br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> I just got yet another error with a website, that I wanted to visit,<br clear="none">> saying my browser is not up to date. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">Heh. Another weenie webmaster wanting to argue with customers.<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Web/opti.html" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Web/opti.html</a><br clear="none"><br clear="none">If it's not a privacy concern, what was the Web site? I strongly<br clear="none">suspect, upon examination, that the site does not actually need anything<br clear="none">but a pretty generic Web browser, but the weenie in charge has caused a<br clear="none">bit of Javascript code to query your browser and compare the reported<br clear="none">User-Agent string against a list of what the weenie considers suitable.<br clear="none">If your browser's reported User-Agent string isn't on the list, a popup<br clear="none">proclaims -- without competent data to support that declaration -- that<br clear="none">your 'browser is not up to date'.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">For versions of Firefox prior to v. 57, you can install User Agent Switcher<br clear="none">(<a shape="rect" href="https://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/," target="_blank">https://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/, </a>Debian package<br clear="none">xul-ext-useragentswitcher. This allows you to, on the fly and whenever<br clear="none">desired, make Firefox answer User-Agent queries with any of a number of<br clear="none">canned responses that are the identification strings of common browsers<br clear="none">/ versions thereof.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">There are at least two good use-cases I can think of, for altering a<br clear="none">browser's User-Agent string. The first is to sidestep the<br clear="none">aforementioned weenies. The second is (if you wish) to declare yours to<br clear="none">be the browser of a mobile device, so that you get served the<br clear="none">mobile-optimised site content rather than the regular content. (The<br clear="none">mobile site is often less fussy and of much cleaner design, reflecting<br clear="none">smartphones and tablets having less screen real-estate to waste.)<br clear="none"><br clear="none">The reason for my caveat about Firefox versions since v. 57 is that<br clear="none">Mozilla, Inc. made the decision to abandon the XUL extensions language <br clear="none">and the XBL communications language required for most Firefox<br clear="none">extensions, and User Agent Switcher is a classic extension written in<br clear="none">XUL.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">For Firefox v. 57+ (which you do not currently have), the equivalent is<br clear="none">User Agent Overrider, written in Mozilla, Inc.'s (well, several<br clear="none">companies') replacement extensions language, WebExtensions.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">My personal opinion is that you should count your lucky stars that you<br clear="none">_haven't_ been force-migrated to current Firefox, so you can still enjoy<br clear="none">the classic and often excellent XUL-based extension codebases.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">But getting to the Frequently Asked Question you raised later in your<br clear="none">post:<br clear="none"><br clear="none">There _is_ a longer-term concern, though. I infer that you are running<br clear="none">the Debian-stable branch, currently "Stretch' aka Debian 9. The Stable<br clear="none">branch is the one widely recommended for ordinary users, and has many<br clear="none">advantages. It has full security support, and the contents are, as the<br clear="none">branch nickname would indicate, rock-stable. And you are protected from<br clear="none">rapid version churn and hundreds of megs of update packages every few<br clear="none">days.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">The downside of Debian-stable is that the software versions are... old. <br clear="none">Fixes (including security fixes) get 'backported' to a version of each<br clear="none">software package that was picked as a long-term stable version for the<br clear="none">life of the Debian release. You won't normally pick up newer upstream<br clear="none">software releases, only backported fixes to the chosen stable one.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">For people who eventually chafe at Debian-stable's electing of a fixed<br clear="none">'platform' for maintenance in each Debian-stable release, with the<br clear="none">consequence that you never get the new and shiny, there _are_<br clear="none">alternatives to Debian-stable that get you the new and shiny, but <br clear="none">you should (please) be _very_ attentive to the unavoidable side-effects: <br clear="none">If you were, for example, to alter your Debian-stable system to instead<br clear="none">follow the Debian-testing track (currently 'Buster', which will be<br clear="none">Debian 10 when releases as the next Debian-stable release), then <br clear="none">you will get all of the new & shiny, _and_ you will get a certain amount<br clear="none">of glitchiness, spotty security-fix coverage, rapid version churn, and<br clear="none">hundreds of megs of update packages every few days that are essentially<br clear="none">unavoidable with a 'rolling' distribution, which is what Debian-testing<br clear="none">is.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Rather than make an irrevocable change to your system, by moving it<br clear="none">forward from Stable to Testing<br clear="none">(<a shape="rect" href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianStability" target="_blank">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianStability</a>), you might consider installing<br clear="none">the current Debian-testing in a VM or on a spare machine, and see how<br clear="none">you like it for a week or three.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">> Debian has Firefox 45.8.0. The latest Firefox is 46.0.2. Mozilla<br clear="none">> website claims it has a lot of new stuff. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">Programmers always push their new and shiny as something you couldn't<br clear="none">possibly live without. Whether that's true or not is for you to decide,<br clear="none">not them.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">There might be reasons to want to use Firefox's new & shiny -- which, by<br clear="none">the way, is v. 60.0.2, not 46.0.2 -- but some Web weenie using a<br clear="none">JavaScript trick to diss your client software because its User-Agent<br clear="none">string isn't on his list isn't among them.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">> Actually, there are other applications for which I would also like a<br clear="none">> version newer than in Debian.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">You mean, in Debian-_stable_.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Try Debian-testing in a VM or on a spare machine. You might like it.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">(The people most likely to have problems on Debian tracks such as<br clear="none">Testing or Unstable, the ones that are the suitable alternatives to<br clear="none">Stable, are the users who depend on the various monstrous Desktop<br clear="none">Environments, such as GNOME3, Cinnamon, MATE, KDE4, and to a lesser<br clear="none">extent XFCE4 and LXDE/LXQt. Those DEs as a whole will tend to be<br clear="none">plagued by periods in which the new versions of particular DE packages<br clear="none">will be uninstallable because of missing dependencies. OTOH, people <br clear="none">like me who wouldn't touch a DE with a bargepole, and prefer a simple<br clear="none">window manager, tend to love Debian-testing.)<div class="yqt5619978714" id="yqtfd31458"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">conspire mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br clear="none"></div><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></div></body></html>