Reply To: Firefox ESR updates (91.4, Oct ESR 102.3)

Hello Xecure,

Xecure wrote:

Support for Non-SSE2 Processors was dropped by Firefox in 2016 (in version 49.0), if I am not mistaken.

Obviously you are mistaken. Right now I’m writing in firefox-esr from antiX 21 (“as is”, full DVD-ISO 32bit Live) on the Athlon XP, which is non-SSE2:

CPU:
  Info: Single Core model: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ socket: LIF Socket (A) 
  note: check bits: 32 type: UP arch: K7 Palomino+ family: 6 model-id: 8 
  stepping: 1 microcode: N/A cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 256 KiB bogomips: 3319 
  Speed: 1660 MHz min/max: N/A base/boost: 1667/1200 volts: 3.3 V 
  ext-clock: 66 MHz Core speed (MHz): 1: 1660 
  Flags: 3dnow 3dnowext 3dnowprefetch cmov cx8 de fpu fxsr mca mce mmx 
  mmxext msr mtrr pae pat pge pse pse36 sep sse syscall tsc vme vmmcall 

$ apt-cache policy firefox-esr
firefox-esr:
  Installiert:           78.15.0esr-1~deb11u1
  Installationskandidat: 91.4.1esr-1~deb11u1
  Versionstabelle:
     91.4.1esr-1~deb11u1 500
        500 http://security.debian.org bullseye-security/main i386 Packages
 *** 78.15.0esr-1~deb11u1 500
        500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian bullseye/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Everything works fine. Now I will set up persistence and update the system to most recent state in order to find out whether firefox is still usable after this update. I have my doubts…

The problem is: Most webpages don’t accept anything besides mainstream and tell you simply “Please install a supported browser…”. So if it turns out firefox will not be usable any longer it means this update renders the PC useless for everyday usage, even if it has worked a minute before flawlessly.