<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px">Having gotten my computer to a stable mode, I am reviewing the long string of emails to clarify details. I need to say that the word “stable” is overloaded. It is “stable” in the sense of “not thrashing”. Not to be confused with Debian-stable. It is really Debian-testing, aka Buster.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13485"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13486">Quoting Rick Moen at Jun 20 at 11:29 AM<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13487">> I strongly<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13489">> suspect, upon examination, that the site does not actually need anything<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13490">> but a pretty generic Web browser, but the weenie in charge has caused a<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13491">> bit of Javascript code to query your browser and compare the reported<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13492">> User-Agent string against a list of what the weenie considers suitable.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13493"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13494">> There are at least two good use-cases I can think of, for altering a<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13495">> browser's User-Agent string. The first is to sidestep the<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13496">> aforementioned weenies. The second is (if you wish) to declare yours to<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13497"> > be the browser of a mobile device, so that you get served the<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13498">> mobile-optimised site content rather than the regular content.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13499"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13500">With hindsight, wish I hadn’t installed the latest firefox-esr so I could add the code to over-write the User-Agent string. However, by this time, I had already brought the computer up to the current Debian-testing and there was not easy way to go back.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13501"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13502">As a related item, I have long used NoScript to reduce the traffic to 3rd party websites. However recently I am encountering more and more sites that link to a dozen or more others. It gets to be a hassle to figure out what I need to temporarily allow. <br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13503"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13504">> The downside of Debian-stable is that the software versions are... old. <br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13505"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13506">Which is why I have been using Debian-testing. But I was impatient and neglected to emphasis this.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13507"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13508">Quoting Rick Moen at Jun 20 at 11:31 AM<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13509">> Oh, I forgot to mention the _other_ halfway measure; Debian backports.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13510"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13511">So, something I might do is change /etc/apt/sources.list to replace testing to buster. At a later date when buster is released, edit the file to replace buster with stable. And after that consider if backports will get some updated package I am dying to have.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13512"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13513">Quoting Rick Moen at Jun 20 at 11:33 PM<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13514">> Look at the contents of /etc/issue, for starters.<br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13516"><br id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1530633957692_13517">/etc/issue is indeed written by apt-get to reflect what was done.<br></div></body></html>