“Mainstream microprocessors have been 64-bit for years. Operating systems have followed suit. Now it’s time for a program used by hundreds of millions of people to make the leap: Firefox. Programmer Armen Zambrano Gasparnian announced the first 64-bit Firefox builds for Windows on Friday, offering an FTP site for those who want to download it. But the software isn’t for mainstream users yet.”
About time might I add, I hope the Linux version isn’t too far off as I am loving Opera 10.6 64bit version on Ubuntu.
$ file /usr/lib/firefox-3.6/firefox
/usr/lib/firefox-3.6/firefox: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64
Hmm isn’t this already available on *nix since..?
Exactly! Ubuntu 8.04 (released back in 2008) already had 64-bit Firefox. This is old news.
Did you miss the word “Windows” in the title?
64 bit firefox build for linux already exist at http://nightly.mozilla.org/
I must laugh at this, like extremely hard…
Adobe Flash for Linux has a 64bit version and Sun(oracle) Java finally have a 64bit java web start, and plugin for Firefox. This after many years of complaints from the Linux community that they had to run 32bit Firefox Under 64 Linux. 64 Bit version of Firefox for Linux has been around a very long time. Well, pretty much as long as Firefox and Mozilla before it…
64 Bit version of Firefox for Linux has been around a very long time. Well, pretty much as long as Firefox and Mozilla before it
If you compile it yourself, but normal people could not just download it like the 32 bit version. And I don’t count nightly versions of minefield a valid download.
Still now their download page does not offer a 64bit version.
Who in their right mind downloads the executable from Mozilla’s website, I wonder? Does any 64-bit distro include the 32-bit version of firefox in its repos? Did it maybe make it easier to run the flash plugin before Adobe released the 64-bit linux version?
Most linux users won’t use the version available from the mozilla download page, they will use the version that comes with their distro and these are almost always compiled as 64bit if you’re running a 64bit distro.
Firefox has pretty much always been compilable on 64bit machines, i used to run it when it was called phoenix on a 64bit alphastation (the alpha doesn’t even support 32bit binaries)..
Au contraire, I have been running 64-bit Firefox, including a 64-bit Flash plugin, on Linux for a few years now. Since about Firefox version 3.0.
It has been available in the standard repositories for a number of distributions.
The OP’s point was that a 64-bit Firefox build was not downloadable from Mozilla. This is quite correct, and applies to all Mozilla software. They do not offer official 64-bit tarballs, so if you want 64-bit Firefox or Thunderbird on Linux you must either use the version in your distro’s repositories (sometimes outdated) or else compile it yourself.
The rebuttal point is that you don’t get Firefox for a Linux distribution from Mozilla. You get it from your distribution’s repositories (and they in turn get the source code from Mozilla), wherein it has been built specifically for the distribution and architecture that you originally installed. It has been built for your machine, it has been built to inetgrate into your Linux desktop distribution, and it has been independently vetted by your distribution maintainers (who did not write it).
This way, you can get Firefox on an ARM netbook, tablet, or pad, or for X86_64, or MIPs, or whatever machine you happen to be using, even though Mozilla’s reference builds aren’t built for your machine/architecture/distribution.
You can’t expect an open source project such as Mozilla to build for every possible architecture out there. That is what distributions are for in the first place. This is how Linux manages the “64-bit transition” (which, BTW, is the very topic of this thread), and in fact Linux manages a multitude of machine architectures in the same way. They each have their own repositories.
Supposing that one should download an executable binary for one’s Linux desktop system from Mozilla’s website is distinctly Windows-think.
Edited 2010-06-01 02:14 UTC
And supposing the distribution will do a good job of packaging Firefox is no better: the Eclipse project had endless problems trying to get web browser window embedding working on all Linux distributions, since each one broke it in a different way (http://vektor.ca/osdl-meeting3.txt).
There is no problem here.
I have just one executable for the 64-bit Flash plugin on my system, it is version 10.0.45.2u. I’m pretty certain the the “u” signifies that it has been packaged by Ubuntu.
It is stable, and it is used without any problems at all by the following browsers: Firefox 3.6, Minefield (Firefox 3.7 aplha 5), Chromium, Chrome, Konqueror and reKonq.
All of those programs are 64-bit browsers.
I am not talking about a browser plugin like Flash, I am talking about embedding the browser itself into another application.
if you want 64-bit Firefox or Thunderbird on Linux you must either use the version in your distro’s repositories (sometimes outdated) or else compile it yourself.
It would seem many didn’t get this point, oh well.
Debian newbies are always asking where they can download a 64bit version of Firefox(proper). Unless they compile their own they’re fresh outta luck.
You could download it since early 2008 from the Ubuntu apt repository. It’s even installed as standard since forever. I have never compiled it myself and have used it (64-bit version under Linux) for years.
Maybe Mozilla should pay more attention to what Canonical is doing with Firefox.
Another clueless Ubuntu user still living with the Windows mentality. <sigh> 64 bit Firefox has been around forever, along with many key 64 bit plugins like Adobe Flash and Sun Java. Furthermore, you might be interested to know that you can also get custom builds of Firefox optimized for your particular CPU make and model. Check out Swiftfox, here: http://getswiftfox.com/
Windows users are starting to pull close to us Linux, BSD, etc users. I think it’s about time for us to move to 128 bit. (^_~)
I have been running a 64bit OS with 64bit applications for god knows how long already. What would the point be of buying a 64bit system if you continue running a legacy OS and apps.
64-bit Firefox has been available in Ubuntu since years! I just upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04.3 to 10.04 and my previous 8.04.3 (original released in 2008) already had 64-bit Firefox!
I thought Mozilla develops both 32 & 64 bit for ages already – so this is news to me. 64bit Firefox has been just as stable as the 32bit version – so it’s definitely not “beta”.
Did you miss the word “Windows” in the title?
This has nothing to do with Linux, MacOS X, BSD, etc.
The article doesn’t, but the first poster implied that there wasn’t a 64-bit Firefox for Linux, and several folks are correcting him.
Edited 2010-06-01 19:40 UTC