08.17.06
Firefox 1.5.0.6 in updates and a policy change
You can now get the latest version of Firefox for your Mandriva Linux 2006 system directly from the Security Updates.
Frédéric Crozat, who maintains Mozilla packages and is the GNOME developer (among other things) for Mandriva, explains:
“Mozilla is not supporting 1.0.x versions of Firefox and Thunderbird anymore. We had shipped 1.0.6 versions of both applications with Mandriva Linux 2006.0 and were able to provide security fixes in sync with version 1.0.8, but now we suddenly found ourselves unsafe. We decided to break our no-backports rule for Firefox and Thunderbird for that reason.”
So there you go, next time you type MandrivaUpdate in your console as root, Firefox will suddenly be safer and more featureful. Kiosk users will benefit from the Firefox update plus the Thunderbird update very soon. UPDATE : Mozilla(TM) Pack 1.5.0.6 is available on Kiosk
Frédéric says it’s likely that a special policy will be implemented for Mozilla software also in Mandriva Linux 2007, resulting in very reactive updates. Although very beneficial for you, dear user, Mozilla’s strategy results in very complicated maintenance of applications that depend on Firefox as a platform, such as Galeon or Epiphany. Another reason to use Konqueror and KHTML some of you will say 
.
In the meantime, run that MandrivaUpdate command already and get Firefox 1.5.0.6!
AdamW said,
August 17, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Hmm, get on message, guys - MandrivaUpdate, not MandrakeUpdate
Jure Repinc said,
August 17, 2006 at 11:42 pm
I think this is a very welcome policy change and thanks to the developers for all the extra steps to make it possible. Not being able to update Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org to the latest version is one of the most frequent complaint I hear about Mandriva. Now big part these are invalid. Thanks again!
Alexandre Solleiro said,
August 18, 2006 at 12:06 pm
True Adam! Fixed, thanks