Firefox 1.03?

[denis09]

I read this discussion with interest. I am a new Ubuntu user, but a long
time Debian (Potato/Woody/Sarge) user (for servers). 



>From what I gather Ubuntu is geared towards the desktop experience, and
I am unsure whether the "Debian way" of package patch backporting is
really the best option for _all_ packages of a desktop distro. 



Take the firefox example. Firefox is an app that is good on its own,
but ten times better  when paired with a set of extensions suited to
the users preferences and work-pattern. The extensions tend to follow
the firefox versions very closely, and I am a bit confused as to which
version of an extension I am to use with the "Ubuntu firefox". 

Additionally you have sites that check the useragent like this :

http://update.mozilla.org (try visiting with the Ubunty Hoary version
of Firefox..)



I urge the developer community around Ubuntu to consider treating some
(not all) desktop application packages differently when it comes to
updates. In the years I have tracked Debian I have mostly been using
the stable sources, and I think once or twice have the devs released
new versions of packages (instead of backporting) in the security
update source. (ssh is the one I remember) To me this implies that it
is not impossible to do this, the apt system works fine with version
upgrades (obviously) in packages. Which means this is a policy
decision. 



Imho, for the desktop some applications are probably better off with
actually tracking the upstream minor versions, and I do believe Firefox
is one of those.


-- 
denis09