Announcing Faster, Lighter Firefox Downloads for Linux with .tar.xz Packaging!
Announcing Faster, Lighter Firefox Downloads for Linux with .tar.xz Packaging! – Firefox Nightly News
Who's not using a package manager? Except for LFS, for which you should compile it yourself.
Most normal users do not do this. But there might be special packages with special setups, like scripts downloading and installing from Mozillas download links. Or package creators themselves might use it. Or maybe you are a developer, in which case such direct downloads would be helpful for testing and comparing stuff. I also assume most people do not care or notice any difference with this change. Still its an improvement without much drawback and thats always good, even if its only a few people benefiting of it.
Yeah, particularly for downloading Firefox Nightly, these self-contained archives are extremely helpful.
And sometimes -bin AUR packages (and of course some normal packages, behind the scenes) use those packages as base. Even though I prefer normal or -git packages.
NixOS packaging pipeline will benefit from this
I don't. I have installed Firefox manually for many years across several distros now, albeit for different reasons. For example:
I see no problem installing it manually. It keeps itself updated and has caused me zero problems.
On Ubuntu I use the tar.bz2 version to not have to deal with snaps or extra repositories. Also on Debian Stable to get the latest version.
I use the flatpak on Fedora but have used the tar version in the past because the package managed version is hijacked with stupid Redhat bookmarks and homepage that loves to return after being removed randomly.
If you don't want to deal with snaps being forced down your throat, why are you still on Ubuntu?
I highly suggests all Ubuntu users to use the vanilla Firefox version downloaded from Mozilla. It's way better because it's not a Snap package.
The .tar.xz format decompresses more than twice as fast as .tar.bz2, allowing you to get up and running in no time
$ time tar xjf firefox-134.0b3.tar.bz2
real 0m9.045s
user 0m8.839s
sys 0m0.450s
$ time tar xJf firefox-135.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.xz
real 0m4.903s
user 0m4.677s
sys 0m0.510s
Nice! Presumably it'd be twice as fast if disk was infinitely fast or something. Unfortunately by testing this I've already used up a hundred times more time than I'll ever save as a result of it.
I am curious too. You tested two different versions, one beta and the other current nightly (different content). It's okay for a quick test, but you can actually have a much closer test. Both nightly and only one day difference:
I run this quick test multiple times and on average these are typical results (don't forget to delete the unpacked folder between each runs):
$ time tar xjf firefox-135.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
real 0m5,784s
user 0m5,700s
sys 0m0,371s
$ time tar xJf firefox-135.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.xz
real 0m1,699s
user 0m1,621s
sys 0m0,315s
On my system that consistently gets results around 10s and 5s so the difference is sort of interesting. Mine's a Ryzen 3600, maybe newer CPU features are of substantial benefit to xz.
Fixing their damn sandbox would be something truly useful.
Implementing a fork server so Flatpak AND Android Firefox can stop being fucking insecure for no reason.
Why do they not just ship normal packages (.deb, .rpm, etc.) or an official flatpak that functions properly?
The Flatpak is official.
I think the "etc" shows how f***ed up it might be to package for every single distro. Releasing a tar with no extra bloat and letting each community doing its own things over it is probably one of the best approaches?
But it makes finding a properly functioning official package more difficult for newer users, and really the etc. was superfluous. You only really need .deb, .rpm, and whatever arch uses. There is a flatpak, but it doesn't work properly.
I think, you've answered your own question? There's a lot of different formats for Linux. Getting them all correct and working on the different distributions is significantly trickier than just bundling a self-contained archive.
Having said that, they do actually provide a DEB repo since a few months ago: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w_install-firefox-deb-package-for-debian-based-distributions-recommended
They officially publish the snap, the flatpak and a deb in an apt repo.
Interesting, I always assumed they would be using a pretty optimal algorithm with their .tar.bz2 format, because they obviously benefit quite a bit from smaller downloads. Good to know that .tar.xz is actually better.
XZ is quite slow for compression when single threaded. When run in parallel it uses a significant amount of RAM. It creates some of the smallest files and is fast to decompress compared to other well-compressed alternatives.
Source: https://linuxreviews.org/Comparison_of_Compression_Algorithms
Thanks. 🙂
Btw how are they the only ones hopping on to XZ?? Like, everyone is switching to zstd currently.
🤷
Yes, use the format that was almost backdoored a few months ago! I'm sure it has a very strong development team behind it! /s
What? More compression?
Here I am wondering why in 2024 we don't have the option to automatically decompress downloaded files like Apple users supposedly can.
Ahh well, I guess that's why these designers don't work for apple. They're not good enough.
Wow, they are going to zip it with a different algo. That's fucking amazing!
Faster installation, I don't know what I will do with all that extra time!
Plus, faster downloads, that's even more free time.
Mozilla really know how to innovate.
Best company evvvvaaarrr
Give 2 millions bonus to that CEO!
Well, now you mention it, the motivation here may be to reduce their bandwidth costs? Probably not 2 million, but every € counts...
It's a little boring but not bad news. Why the hate?!