Ongoing and Never Ending Travails of Linux as a Desktop

[benali72]

I've had good luck with Palemoon, too.  Fast and reliable, just like FF once was.

It does have a few minor quirks, though. And its add-on library is limited. (The whole add-on concept is so unstable now between browser releases that it's become a huge mess for users, especially of FF).

Note that you can define multiple profiles with Palemoon just as you can with FF, but you do it using this line command to enter the profile manager --

%>  palemoon -p

One thing some people do is to install a whole bunch of browsers. That way there's always something that does what you want if you happen to hit quirks (such as browser extensions that only work with certain versions, bugs, different html rendering, etc). 

Among some to consider installing -- FF, Palemoon, Qupzilla, Epiphany, Seamonkey, Opera, Brave, Midori, TOR browser, Chromium. Some are in the standard repository (FF, Qupzilla, Epiphany, Midori) and some are not (Palemoon, Seamonkey, Brave, etc).

[The Gorn]

I've had good luck with Palemoon, too.  Fast and reliable, just like FF once was.

It does have a few minor quirks, though. And its add-on library is limited. (The whole add-on concept is so unstable now between browser releases that it's become a huge mess for users, especially of FF).

Note that you can define multiple profiles with Palemoon just as you can with FF, but you do it using this line command to enter the profile manager --

%>  palemoon -p

One thing some people do is to install a whole bunch of browsers. That way there's always something that does what you want if you happen to hit quirks (such as browser extensions that only work with certain versions, bugs, different html rendering, etc). 

Among some to consider installing -- FF, Palemoon, Qupzilla, Epiphany, Seamonkey, Opera, Brave, Midori, TOR browser, Chromium. Some are in the standard repository (FF, Qupzilla, Epiphany, Midori) and some are not (Palemoon, Seamonkey, Brave, etc).

Seamonkey is another port of the Mozilla code.

As far as browser instances and alternate profiles, yes, that's the supreme power of the Mozilla clones, to create multiple browser environments.

A desktop shortcut in Linux for launching an alternate profile which does not interfere process wise with an existing running browser instance is...

Code: [Select]

palemoon  -new-instance -P "alt-profile"
-new-instance creates a new process space. The -P specifies one of the profile names from the profile manager. So, this lets me side by side run my default browser instance with multiple windows, and a browser with a different profile.

User defined profiles are a capability that Chromium lacks.

[The Gorn]

In general there are more positives than negatives in adopting this route:

Self-determination: my workstation will always, absolutely guaranteed, be useful to work with my data.  No license fees, no installation keys, no activation, no product tracking. Essentially total freedom and security depending on how deep I want to dive.

Stability: In general, despite the many glitches I've bitched about in this thread, Linux is generally FAR more stable day to day and in terms of the behavior of the environment - startup and shutdown, usage, and updating system components - than Windows has ever been for me, even Windows 7. One thing I do NOT miss is the computer and hard drive churning when I start up or shut down because Microsoft forced my system into an update I didn't ask for. And no ridiculous delays, ever, in startup or shutdown due to memory issues. Starting up is about a minute (I'll time it sometime) and doesn't really vary.

Updates are quick and painless (so far): Many times Windows update will hose a desktop. Updating the Linux OS is extremely quick by comparison, without the need ever for reboot cycles.

No loss of functionality whatsoever: I When I need Windows I'VE GOT Windows. I bought a copy of Windows 7 Pro x64 QUITE cheaply ($30 on Ebay). I installed it VirtualBox initially.  it was activated after manually calling MS on the phone for product key activation, and since then I have cloned off that copy of Win 7 installed to backups, so I never need to activate this copy again. It's a permanent solution for me needing that version of Windows. Which runs indistinguishably from a "PC dedicated" instance.

Geek level control of the OS: It's Linux. So my knowledge garnered from running VPSs is very highly leveraged in using this Linux desktop. I can comprehend and work with cron. I NEVER got used to the equivalent in Windows and it never behaved well for me (you apparently need MCSE level knowledge to schedule tasks and I DON'T HAVE THE FREAKING TIME.)

Linux has its warts, its idiocies due to asperger's FOSS developer immaturity and ego ... but it is still a great solution for those of the IT priesthood, like me. 

[benali72]

Gorn, thanks so much for the command for starting multiple Palemoon instances. I didn't know that... very useful!

Adding to your general Linux comments --

Updates -- doesn't cause the issues people encounter in Windows updates. From years of experience across many computers, I've very rarely encountered trouble. No reboots ever after updating (unless you're upgrading releases).

Suspend / Hibernate / Standby -- here's an area linux falls short on. Doesn't work on many computers -- and the only way to find out for your specific computer is by time-consuming trial and error, testing all options. Oops!

Stability -- I've had much better luck than the Gorn in this area, probably because he has serious programmer requirements whereas I only support common end-user needs (office, browsers, email, social media, etc)

For example, I placed a PC as a group-use machine in a small charitable organization nearly 3 years ago. Never heard about it again until last week when they finally melted the disk drive. So 3 years of use in an end-user community with no administrator and no problems -- an excellent record by any standard.

Self-determination / control -- this is the biggie. Being pushed around by a vendor and confronted with artificial constraints is just too much, imho.

[The Gorn]

Thanks, Benali.

Also, not using Firefox, which seemed to behave like a piece of buggy malware, was a positive move. Firefox on Linux is NOT my recommendation now. The developers are idiots and have tampered with a great ecosystem.

To add to my screed... after I stopped using Firefox, my system become much more responsive and quick. Firefox before the unusable (for me) recent Quantum release would stop and stall every few seconds during use. It made any kind of text entry extremely painful. I also observed that the CPU was pegged at around 15% CPU use just sitting idle but still having that damned browser running - and a constantly growing memory burden of up to 3-4 GB depending on how long I ran Firefox. (I know this for a fact because closing the browser caused both issues to cease until the next time I used FF.)

Moving to Pale Moon and avoiding the use of Firefox altogether has made the system much livelier and there is only the token idle CPU consumption now.

Also, check this out. I use the "inspector" tool in a browser quite often (it lets you peek at Javascript, HTML, and CSS in detail.) In Firefox they used to have an absolutely awesome inspector. After a certain release (I think v 48) the "3D" capability of the inspector was removed. Morons.

I NEED THAT to see what's going on when stuff gets hidden on a web page. Also it shows the association of page elements grouped inside DIV's and other container elements.

Dumb assh*les.

Pale Moon STILL HAS THE 3D BROWSER IN INSPECTOR.

Pale Moon is Unfrozen Cave Man Firefox, basically.

Example (this site home viewed in Pale Moon 3d view):

[The Gorn]

Another bonus benefit:

Certain open source tools are MUCH better in stability and performance in Linux than they are in their comparable ports in Windows.

Specifically, The Gimp image tool. (A sort of open source Photoshop.)

In Windows the damned thing was crashing all of the time.

In Linux, the identical UI and features, but rock-solid.

[ilconsiglliere]

I ripped out Firefox on my Mac and replaced it with Waterfox. The extensions still work.

Have to say Waterfox is much more stable and responsive than Firefox as they stripped out all the garbage.

Getting ready to replace Ubuntu's Unity gui with KDE Plasma on my Linux box. There is no way in hell I am using that piece of garbage called Gnome. The nice thing about Linux is you can swap out the GUI with not a whole lot of aggravation.