Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

On the near eve of the release for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1, I decided to give it a go.  Because Ubuntu has yet to package it up yet, I had to manually install the binary using my typical method of doing some symlink madness that I learned back during my NCG days as a sym admin.  Booting up RC1 led to all my plugins stop functioning and me having to re-download everything.

Well, turns out that a lot of plugins that were barely enabled for 3b5 were now just not going to work with RC1.  And being a heavy user of plugins, I just can't live without them.

I think before I plan to do a permanent upgrade to FF3, I'm going to wait until one or two security/stability releases.  By then, most plugins should hopefully have matured so that I can again utilize them.

This all said, I think Ubuntu has made some grave mistakes with this last release candidate and they have compromised the integrity of their distribution by attempting to remain cutting edge.  I enjoy cutting edge technologies as much as anyone, but I prefer system stability overall.  Well, I probably have to wait another half year before 8.04 Ubuntu becomes stable, but by then 8.10 (or whatever) ought to be out.  But I think I'll stick with 8.04 just to make sure my system is stable (or what's left of it).

As far as Firefox is concerned, I can't fault them in this.  I can't even fault the plugin authors who have yet to update their plugins.  But I'm just going to have to be patient while these issues get solved.