Mozilla is FINALLY pulling the plug on 32-bit Firefox builds for Linux, a decade after Google Chrome did the same. Why now? It says they're getting hard to build.
I mean some of them have been good. I actually really like the offline translation, for example. No more sending data to Google Translate servers is a genuine privacy win.
There’s also been some better screen reader support integrated because of it, and my sister loves it, she just wants it to be expanded further.
Yes, there’s also the LLM integration, which I’m… less enthused by, to say the least.
But at least it’s optional and can be tied into local models if you wish. Plus there’s the factor of new normie users testing out Firefox and going “it doesn’t have a gpt bot? Pfft I’m going back to Chrome, Firefox is so far behind” to contend with. If the market decides it wants that feature, then Mozilla can’t really ignore it.
Does that mean a smaller binary somehow? Less code? Eventually maybe?
It could mean faster development if they can spend that time on other things
More AI features. Hooray!
I mean some of them have been good. I actually really like the offline translation, for example. No more sending data to Google Translate servers is a genuine privacy win.
There’s also been some better screen reader support integrated because of it, and my sister loves it, she just wants it to be expanded further.
Yes, there’s also the LLM integration, which I’m… less enthused by, to say the least.
But at least it’s optional and can be tied into local models if you wish. Plus there’s the factor of new normie users testing out Firefox and going “it doesn’t have a gpt bot? Pfft I’m going back to Chrome, Firefox is so far behind” to contend with. If the market decides it wants that feature, then Mozilla can’t really ignore it.
It just means they won’t test 32 bit versions for bugs. The impact on binary size will be non-negligible.
So… the impact will be gligible?