Will icecat and or iceweasel and or iceape and or icedove be packaged for Ubuntu Linux

[Bret Busby]

On 29/3/21 4:54 am, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 03:40:11 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>> GNU icecat is apparently only available in tarball form (which caused
>> snowballing problems with Netscape and its products)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> every now and then I install IceCat on Arch Linux and Ubuntu. On both
> the latest version I installed is GNU IceCat 60.7.0. The latest
> snapshot from git seems to be 78.8.0 [1]. I don't know what those
> "snowballing problems with Netscape and its products" are, but in my
> experiences IceCat <= 60.7.0 is completely unusable to view almost all
> websites, at least unless you disable all IceCat specific privacy
> settings. I wonder if there are still any benefits by using IceCat with
> all those special privacy settings disabled. Probably it's just very
> insecure, since latest IceCat releases are based on way outdated
> releases of Firefox [2].
> 
> FWIW Firefox and Thunderbird are supported by official Ubuntu
> repositories and support is provided by the Ubuntu mailing lists.
> 
> I understand concerns related to the original Mozilla software, but in
> my experiences migrating to forks, such as the Ice named ones or
> Pale Moon [3] is pointless.
> 
> Regards,
> Ralf
> 
> [1] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/icecat/
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat#Version_history
> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goanna_(software)
> 

Hello, Ralf.

1. The snowballing problem with Netscape tarballs, that I encountered, 
was that, every time that a new version became available, rather than 
being able to update it, I had to create a new subdirectory for the new 
version tarball, put it in that, then decompress it, and I ended up with 
seven or more directory levels for Netscape. It just kept snowballing.

When package management became available for upgrading web browsers and 
other software, it made a great difference.

2. My reason for wanting to shift away from the Mozilla software, was 
the elimination of all of the ozilla hosted support mailing lists - 
lists.mozilla.org is being exterminated by Mozilla.

With the permission of the list administrator of the
mozilla-support-firefox at lists.mozilla.org
mailing list, I have just now, created a replacement mailing list, as I 
(and other lists administrators) did, when ancestry.com shut down its 
about 57,000 free genealogy mailing lists at rootsweb.com

So, having posted the information to the Firefox support mailing list, I 
will see what happens with that issue.

I am waiting for a response from the Seamonkey list administrator.

-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............