[sf-lug] Tip: Better to use Chromium/Chrome but up-to-date FF fine too ... for Jitsi

[Akkana Peck]

> Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36 at SDF.ORG):
> > My vote similar to Michael's here; an updated Firefox seems to
> > function just as well as or even a bit perceptively "better" than
> > Chromium/Chrome for Jitsi Meet.

Rick Moen writes:
> It's not surprising that a sufficiently recent Firefox is particularly
> good, because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC#Support includes 
> 'Mozilla Firefox 22+' -- v. 22 having been a mid-2013 release.  Even all
> releases of the Firefox ESR (extended support release) edition are more
> recent than that, so _theoretically_ you ought not to find older
> Firefox, right?

I first tried jitsi back in March. I was running Ubuntu 19.10 (eoan)
with the Firefox that came with that. If I'm correctly reading
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/eoan/+source/firefox/+changelog
that would have been either Firefox 74.0 or 75.0.

Jitsi gave me unspecific warnings about how I probably wouldn't get a
good experience due to the browser I was using. And indeed, jitsi
kept stuttering and freezing, for up to half a minute at a time.
Chromium had no such problems. Several other people in the same LUG
meeting also switched and found their problems disappeared in
chromium, so it wasn't just some personal firefox setting of mine
(in fact, I think I was using it with a default profile).

Of course, the jitsi problems I experienced might have been
something to do with Ubuntu's Firefox build. I didn't try a 75.0
from mozilla.org. And I haven't tried a more recent Firefox (I'm on
80.0 now), and I know I should; I've heard it works better now.

I notice that wikipedia page doesn't specify OS. With video features,
Mozilla has sometimes delayed support on Linux compared to the other
platforms. Remember the YouTube HTML5 transition? It took forever
(seems like it was well over a year, but that might be bad memory)
after HTML5 video was supported on Win/Mac before Firefox on
Linux finally supported it solidly.

[echoey mics]
> Earbuds fix the problem no matter what microphone and no matter where
> it's located.  just sayin'.

Good point!

        ...Akkana