Firefox as default browser in Fedora

[Steven Garrity]

In the interest of disclosure, I've worked on the Visual Identity team
responsible for the new Firefox logo (and more stuff to come). I'm not
making money on it, but I am involved in Firefox.

I would like to see Firefox included as the default web browser on Fedora.

I know the discussion about including Mozilla Firebird has been had
several times over here on the fedora-devel-list. The general consensus
I was able to garner from searching the archives seems to be something
like this:


> “There are already too many browsers in Fedora”
This is certainly true. I don't think anyone would advocate adding
another browser without dropping one of the existing browsers. Mozilla
'classic' would be the prime candidate. That said, I would hate to see
necessities to keep Mozilla prevent a strong browser from getting in.


> “Mozilla is required for other apps”
There didn't seem to be any confirmation of this, but there was
speculation that some other apps in Fedora may depend on Mozilla libraries.

For example, Karl DeBisschop said of replacing Mozilla with Firefox,
still called firebird at the time
(http://redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2003-December/msg00295.html):
> Can't speak for others, but I'd take that trade. It's probably not
> really practical, however, because epiphany (and galeon2) both depend
> on the libs from mozilla classic, so ath that point why would you not
> have the browser since you already had the libs. Or could galeon and
> epiphany be made to run on the Firebird libs?

Can anyone clarify this? It looks to me that Epiphany does require
Mozilla - but nothing else seems to.


> “The Mozilla suite is is more complete”
Well, Firefox can certainly replace the browser component of Mozilla
(Navigator). I'm not sure if Thunderbird is ready to be included as a
mail client – but then again, Evolution is already in there and with
it's move into Gnome, is clearly a strong default. Also, ChatZilla can
be installed on top of Firefox as an XPI.


> “It's not ready (1.0) yet”
This has probably been the biggest hurdle to getting Firefox into
Fedora, and rightly so. However, I find that the
latest 0.8 release is a stable release and the lack of a “1.0”
status is really just nomenclature. Many people have been using Firefox 
(then firebird) as their primary browser for over six months (myself 
included).

Also, from now on, development on Firefox is aimed at refinements 
towards 1.0. Now would be a good time to get started on bringing it into 
Fedora, to have it ready and integrated in time with Firefox 1.0.

Even if it is decided to wait for 1.0 before including Firefox or making
it the default browser, I don't think it is necessary to wait for 1.0 to
make a decision. Firefox 0.8 is strong enough to be judged worthy of
inclusion/default-status as is.

I think that Firefox is a better browsing experience. It is
faster, smaller (significantly smaller almost half the size of Mozilla
Navigator packages).

Comments/feedback appreciated.

Thank you,
Steven Garrity