[SeaMonkey] Re: package updates

[NoOp]

On 11/23/2011 04:41 PM, James Freer wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 11:58 PM, Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
...
>> The Mozilla products tend to be exceptions to this due to the way their
>> product cycle works and the infeasibility of backporting security
>> updates.  For example, Ubuntu 11.04 as released had Firefox 4.0, but
>> Firefox 7.0.1 is currently in the security updates for 11.04.
>>
>> So, on the contrary, I think you can expect to see Firefox 8 in security
>> updates for 11.04 and 11.10 fairly soon (I'm not giving away any secrets
>> by saying this; they're undergoing testing in the
>> ubuntu-mozilla-security PPA already).  Our security team keeps in close
>> touch with Mozilla on this and has dedicated engineering time for
>> keeping those packages up to date.
>>
>> --
>> Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]
> 
> I for one have been unsure of Mozilla updates [currently using xubuntu
> 10.04]. I started using Seamonkey 6 months ago and there haven't been
> any updates... and i think only one for Firefox. That made me think
> that Chrome was a better safer bet. As for email i've found
> Thunderbird almost unusable for imap as it's so slow - now switched to
> Alpine [speed is amazing and i now prefer the text client].
...

Joe Lesko has signed on for SeaMonkey packaging. Joe has builds for the
current release of SeaMonkey (2.5 final) in his dev PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~joe-nationnet/+archive/seamonkey-dev

and 2.5b4 (the beta just before 2.5 final) in his beta PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~joe-nationnet/+archive/seamonkey-beta

You can add his -dev ppa and get 2.5. However I recommend disabling the
ppa afterwards as he'll be adding 2.6b1 shortly.

I've been testing Joe's builds & corresponding with him on each one. I
run them alongside standard mozilla builds for comparison & so far Joe
has done an excellent job with each one. So you're quite safe (IMO) if
you want to try his ppa's.

@Colin Watson: what's the delay on releasing Joe's builds to
<https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/seamonkey> ? The exising builds
are chock full of security issues and anything below 2.0 is no longer
supported by Mozilla (including security updates). See:
<http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/>

Otherwise James, I recommend that you just download from Mozilla,
extract to a home folder & run directly from there. That way you'll
always be able to get the updates from Mozilla directly (they are on a 6
week release cycle in sync with Firefox and Thunderbird), see:
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases>[1]. Mozilla's SeaMonkey will use
your existing ~/.mozilla/seamonkey folder/profile. Note: you can do
exactly the same with Firefox if you wish.

==============
Release announcement for SeaMonkey 2.5 (11/23/2011):

The SeaMonkey project is proud to present SeaMonkey 2.5: The new major
release of the all-in-one Internet suite is available for download now
<http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/>! Building on the same
Mozilla platform as the newest Firefox release, it delivers the latest
developments in web technologies such as HTML5, hardware acceleration
and improved JavaScript speed.

SeaMonkey 2.5 is available in 24 languages, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Most notably, this release features for the first time:

  * Users now have more control over their add-ons. Upon upgrade,
activation of
    third-party add-ons needs to be confirmed explicitly.
  * Improvements to HTML5 media elements and added support for new media
APIs to
    improve the overall performance of video and audio
  * Additional support for HTML5 technologies, including the crossorigin
    attribute and insertAdjacentHTML
  * Updates to WebSockets
  * Support for CORS for WebGL textures
  * Hyphenation is now supported in many more languages
  * Fixed several stability issues.
  * Fixed several security issues.
  * Fixed several high visibility usability issues from SeaMonkey 2.4.

For a more complete list of major changes in SeaMonkey 2.5, see the
What's New in SeaMonkey 2.5 section of the Release Notes
<http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/seamonkey2.5/>, which also
contain a list of known issues and answers to frequently asked
questions. For a more general overview of the SeaMonkey project (and
screen shots
<http://www.seamonkey-project.org/doc/screenshots>!), visit
www.seamonkey-project.org <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>.
================

If you want to test the 2.6b1 Mozilla builds:

SeaMonkey 2.6 Beta 1 is now available for free download
<http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/2.6b1> on the SeaMonkey
website. We encourage testers to get involved
<http://www.seamonkey-project.org/dev/get-involved> in discussing and
reporting problems as well as further improving the product.


[1] That currently shows 2.5 still in beta. It is not & is fully
released. Justin Wood (Callek) just hasn't gotten around to updating the
page. I've sent him a note asking him to update the page.