Arctic Fox web browser for 10.6 (32 & 64-bit)

[sparty411]

Okay, I did a successful build of Basilisk using the "-march=i686 and -mno-sse2" flags. However, after doing a little research on compiler options, I learned that "i686" will do a generic build for compatibility with the Pentium Pro. Seeing as how (probably) nobody in their right mind is still using a Pentium Pro for modern web browsing, it seems that the "pentium3" flag would be better suited for us, as it leverages MMX, as well as plain old SSE, whereas the "i686" flag does not. I'm recompiling it now, and should have the better optimized build uploaded to my Google Drive account soon . I favor Basilisk over Pale Moon, as it more closesly resembles Firefox 52 (best Firefox release evar).

 

[z970]

Okay, I did a successful build of Basilisk using the "-march=i686 and -mno-sse2" flags. However, after doing a little research on compiler options, I learned that "i686" will do a generic build for compatibility with the Pentium Pro. Seeing as how (probably) nobody in their right mind is still using a Pentium Pro for modern web browsing, it seems that the "pentium3" flag would be better suited for us, as it leverages MMX, as well as plain old SSE, whereas the "i686" flag does not. I'm recompiling it now, and should have the better optimized build uploaded to my Google Drive account soon . I favor Basilisk over Pale Moon, as it more closesly resembles Firefox 52 (best Firefox release evar).

That explains the "SSE disabled" flags...

I'm having terrible luck with my builds. Would you mind compiling Pale Moon 28.8.2.1 for me with these new discoveries?

We should really have a separate thread for this stuff. Like a Wiki.

If people were more informed about browser compiling, that would eliminate some of the current issues around PowerPC and Pentium !!! browsing. Choice and ability are good things, after all...

 

[sparty411]

I'm going to bed shortly, but here is a link to the Pentium3 optimized Basilisk build. Addons can be found at the Basilisk website, and old TFF addons should work as well (I like the version of NoScript that Cameron has archived). I can build Palemoon tomorrow after I get out of work.

If you're having trouble with dependencies, I discovered that you can install all necessary dependencies for building a Mozilla-like browser by entering the root directory of the source code and running "./mach bootstrap" and it will pull the dependencies from (mozilla...?) I believe, and install them. However, I've only tested this method on Ubuntu. For what it's worth, my build environment is Lubuntu 18.04 32-bit PAE. I could probably just set up a 32 bit VM on top of a 64 bit distro, but it was less hassle to simply have a separate hard drive, with the distro for my 32 bit build environment installed exclusively.

I do think compiling browsers for PPC is a bit more involved, because a bit of x86 specific code has to be removed from the source. @wicknix would know about that.

I think that the lack of knowledge around compiling web browsers is due to some elitist gatekeeping. Not every developer is as willing to help as @wicknix. MC or Tobin would dress you down, and run you out of town if you had the nerve to ask them how to build UXP yourself. ESPECIALLY if your intent was to build it, targeting an old CPU arch. But, yes @z970mp, a browser compilation wiki would be very helpful indeed. If you're interested in learning more about GCC compiler options, you can do some reading here.

 

[z970]

Whenever the basilisk executable is launched, it spits out:

/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_7.0.0' not found (required by /basilisk/libmozsqlite3.so)
Couldn't load XPCOM.

I'm on Debian 9, and thus limited to GCC 6. These builds might need to happen on something a little older than 18.04 to be broadly applicable to most old machines. If we want to be really ambitious, maybe we can even put together some kind of publicly-available community compute environment running Debian 7 or something to build all these browsers and packages. Hey, now there's an idea.

This Wiki proposal is a great initiative. I see a lot of potentially game-changing stuff in that resource. - I'll see what I can put together over the next coming days, unless of course anyone beats me to it.

 

[sparty411]

Whenever the basilisk executable is launched, it spits out:

/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_7.0.0' not found (required by /basilisk/libmozsqlite3.so)
Couldn't load XPCOM.

I'm on Debian 9, and thus limited to GCC 6. These builds might need to happen on something a little older than 18.04 to be broadly applicable to most old machines. If we want to be really ambitious, maybe we can even put together some kind of publicly-available community compute environment running Debian 7 or something to build all these browsers and packages. Hey, now there's an idea.

This Wiki proposal is a great initiative. I see a lot of potentially game-changing stuff in that resource. - I'll see what I can put together over the next coming days, unless of course anyone beats me to it.

Ubuntu LTS packages are old enough for my liking, but I guess it could be built with an even older GCC. Out of curiosity, why are you using Debian 9? Isn't 10 the stable release?

 

[sparty411]

Ubuntu LTS packages are old enough for my liking, but I guess it could be built with an even older GCC. Out of curiosity, why are you using Debian 9? Isn't 10 the stable release? I have a couple Athlon XP and Pentium 3 machines that run Debian Unstable pretty well, but I suppose someone running really exotic graphics hardware might be stuck on Linux Kernel 3.16 or so..

 

[z970]

After using Buster since it released, I have concluded I don't like it as much as Stretch. Preload is gone, sysvinit-core is gone, Midori 7 is not as good as 5.11, Surf 2.0 is broken (1.7 was not), and many other packages I rely on are gone too. It's also slightly heavier than Stretch due to the newer kernel and packages.

About the only thing I don't like about Stretch is that Buster had a newer version of Window Maker that I really came to like, and the Stretch version is almost in the dark ages in comparison. I suppose I can just install the newer one from .deb (as one of the perks of Window Maker is that it lacks many dependencies), but I really shouldn't need to.

Stretch was also my first real Linux distro, so it also holds a type of value other distros don't.

There were a couple of other reasons, but I don't keep databases of this stuff...

EDIT: One more thing, APT complains about missing packages when you try to install the Pale Moon build dependencies. Not so on Stretch, which can find everything just fine.

 

[sparty411]

After using Buster since it released, I have concluded I don't like it as much as Stretch. Preload is gone, sysvinit-core is gone, Midori 7 is not as good as 5.11, Surf 2.0 is broken (1.7 was not), and many other packages I rely on are gone too. It's also slightly heavier than Stretch due to the newer kernel and packages.

About the only thing I don't like about Stretch is that Buster had a newer version of Window Maker that I really came to like, and the Stretch version is almost in the dark ages in comparison. I suppose I can just install the newer one from .deb (as one of the perks of Window Maker is that it lacks many dependencies), but I really shouldn't need to.

Stretch was also my first real Linux distro, so it also holds a type of value other distros don't.

There were a couple of other reasons, but I don't keep databases of this stuff...

EDIT: One more thing, APT complains about missing packages when you try to install the Pale Moon build dependencies. Not so on Stretch, which can find everything just fine.

You could probably install a newer build of GCC from the Sid repo's. I use GCC 8 on Wheezy with one of my iBooks, and it works just fine. I'll try to set up a Wheezy build environment later on, to see if it will compile on an older version of GCC. That would ensure maximum compatibility.

 

[wicknix]

It will build with gcc 4.9, 5.4 and 6.5 just fine.

Cheers

 

[sparty411]

It will build with gcc 4, 5 and 6 just fine.

Cheers

Cool, sounds like it should work then.

 

[juancarlosonetti]

@wicknix, I might try to build this on NetBSD, since it's the only OS that plays well with my ATI Radeon 7500.

What would I need to build this, other than gcc? And do you think it will compile fine?

 

[wicknix]

It should build. It does on x86 netbsd. I'm not sure what packages you'll need because in Debian and Ubuntu you just apt install build-essential which pulls in 80% of the dev tools and libs. However I can say you will need gcc4, 5 or 6 (nothing newer) x11-dev, gtk2-dev, glib-dev, yasm, and ccache.

Edit: and autoconf2.13 and python27

Cheers

 

[sparty411]

Upon initiating the Palemoon build in Wheezy, I was greeted with an error informing me that my compiler was too old, and at least GCC 4.72 is required. I had to install GCC 4.9 from the Jessie repo's, but it is building now.

 

[sparty411]

Here is the 'New Moon' noSSE2 build. I uploaded it to the google drive folder here. GCC 4.9 or better is required.

 

[z970]

@sparty411 Was this the NM 28.8.2.1 build w/ pentium3 -O3 optimization?

All that is present is Basilisk and PM 28.8 i686...

 

[sparty411]

@sparty411 Was this the NM 28.8.2.1 build w/ pentium3 -O3 optimization?

All that is present is Basilisk and PM 28.8 i686...

That is just the generic name it spits out after packaging, to indicate i686 compatibility. Pale Moon was built with the pentium3 flag, as well as Basilisk.

 

[z970]

Works great. Really fast.

Thanks a lot.

 

[sparty411]

Works great. Really fast.

Thanks a lot.

No problem ?

 

[Giuliano C]

Hello, I've downloaded Artic Fox on Mac Snow leopard, but it not work. What I've wrong? Please, explain me things with very simple words, because I not know as to do things as to compile.

 

[RobJos]

Hello, I've downloaded Artic Fox on Mac Snow leopard, but it not work. What I've wrong? Please, explain me things with very simple words, because I not know as to do things as to compile.

Ciao Giuliano, ci sono dei problemi tra la versione 19 e alcuni utenti 10.6.8. (come me). Dovresti provare con la v. 18, fino a quando non verranno risolti.
V.19 is problematic for some 10.6.8 users like myself. Try v. 18 until things get fixed.

 

[wicknix]

The download link for older builds is here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1O4I0v611mNdkXPMZs4xI4qWUhXqGzPJb

Cheers

 

[Giuliano C]

Thank you to both. Which difference have with Water Fox? Over to be an updated browser.

Would me like have a dark theme on Address Bar and top side. This is a wrong post?

Would me like to use an addons as night shift (that with half moon an many colors). Would me like to add a black filter for reduce brightness from my browser. Actually I've added Advenced Night Mode. It's cute, but not perfect. i've sent an email to developper for fix bugs, but not has a brightness setting.

 

[juancarlosonetti]

It should build. It does on x86 netbsd. I'm not sure what packages you'll need because in Debian and Ubuntu you just apt install build-essential which pulls in 80% of the dev tools and libs. However I can say you will need gcc4, 5 or 6 (nothing newer) x11-dev, gtk2-dev, glib-dev, yasm, and ccache.

Edit: and autoconf2.13 and python27

Cheers

I have seen that the OpenBSD mozconfig uses clang as the compiler. Do you think it would build with the most recent clang version?

 

[wicknix]

The Mac builds use clang, so i'd say give it a shot.

 

[juancarlosonetti]

Nice, in some days the NetBSD devs will release a new stable version, so I'll wait until then and see what happens.