[Bug 228207] [NEW] [hardy] firefox 3 (beta) is riddled with problems

[Mike Green]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: firefox

How a beta release of firefox  (3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3) got chosen as
the default browser in a long term release is beyond me, it is riddled
with problems that left me with an extremely poor opinion of hardy.  It
took me all of five minutes to experience several show stopping
problems.

After launching the shiny new beta version of firefox for the first time
after upgrading:

1) Most of my existing addons stopped working and there were no
replacements for firefox 3.

2) Java plugin missing.

3) Went to the CNN web site, browser crashed immediately after clicking
on two news articles.

It took me all of five minutes to determine that I could not use firefox
3, so I installed the firefox-2 package.  I then ran into even more
problems.

1) None of my pre-existing plugins worked after having launched
firefox-3, apparently firefox 3 clobbered something.  Disabling each
addon, re-enabling them, relaunching the browser, would work sometimes.

2) Update alternatives does not touch the /usr/bin/firefox symlink,
causing random applications (kmail, knewsticker) to launch firefox 3
again and clobber my mozilla profile again, disabling all of my addons.
I had to manually remove the /usr/bin/firefox symlink and recreate it,
pointing to firefox-2.

3) The firefox-2 package should add a Provides: firefox so that firefox
three can be completely removed without causing other packages that
depend on firefox to be removed.  I cannot currently extricate firefox 3
from my box without it wanting to autoremove important packages like
subversion, mysql-client-5.0, ssh-ashpass, libsvn-perl, debian-keyring,
etc....

4) Java plugin missing in firefox-2 also, had to manually create the
symlink in /usr/lib/firefox/plugins.

There are just too many problems caused by foisting a beta release of a
major package on unsuspecting users.  Hardy should revert back to
installing firefox-2 until installing and using both on the same box can
be possible without rendering the user experience a nightmare.

** Affects: firefox (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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[hardy] firefox 3 (beta) is riddled with problems
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/228207
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