>From what I can tell the maintainers have no intention of spending time supporting Ubuntu 16.04 or older. Even when Xenial was the current LTS they weren't responding here, and now that 18.04 has been out for 5 month there's even less motivation to handle older distros.
Having built Firefox 59 from source I think I get some of the reasons why they'd consider this a heavy support task. It's hard to get gcc and Rust to play nice on old cross-compiling toolchains, not to mention that sketchy assembly code for XPCOM. From a practical perspective, user workarounds can go in this order: 1) Use the latest firefox:armhf on 18.04 Bionic, if that's what you're running or you're open to upgrading. 2) Earlier distros like 16.04 or Debian Stretch: Install the latest firefox:arm64 if your system supports AArch64. 3) If armhf is the only option and you're on 16.04, you can still set up the firefox 18.04 deb package from Launchpad. Download its dependencies like libstdc++ and following my instructions in #117 to place the appropriate runtime-linked libraries. Relying on armhf builds from Bionic in the worst case 3): this avoids having someone to maintain the whole build flow for Xenial and Trusty. I'm only speaking for Firefox here, but if it all comes down to crashes in libxul.so then maybe much of this is sufficient for Thunderbird too. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to firefox in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1711337 Title: Firefox crashes at start on armv7L after 55.0.1 update Status in Mozilla Firefox: Expired Status in UBports Image for Aquaris M10 FHD: New Status in firefox package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Firefox always crashes when launched after the 55.0.1 update on an Orange Pi PC Plus (a single-board computer similar to a Raspberry Pi), even in safe mode. I did a fresh install of Armbian (a Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 re-spin for ARM single-board computer) on a similar board (Orange Pi Plus 2e), installed Firefox and experienced the same problem--it won't load without crashing. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04 Package: firefox 55.0.1+build2-0ubuntu0.16.04.2 Uname: Linux 3.4.113-sun8i armv7l AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.25. ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.10 Architecture: armhf AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC1: jim 1138 F.... pulseaudio /dev/snd/controlC0: jim 1138 F.... pulseaudio BuildID: 20170814194718 Card0.Amixer.info: Card hw:0 'audiocodec'/'audiocodec' Mixer name : '' Components : '' Controls : 12 Simple ctrls : 12 Card1.Amixer.info: Card hw:1 'sndhdmi'/'sndhdmi' Mixer name : '' Components : '' Controls : 1 Simple ctrls : 1 Card1.Amixer.values: Simple mixer control 'hdmi audio format Function',0 Capabilities: enum Items: 'null' 'pcm' 'AC3' 'MPEG1' 'MP3' 'MPEG2' 'AAC' 'DTS' 'ATRAC' 'ONE_BIT_AUDIO' 'DOLBY_DIGITAL_PLUS' 'DTS_HD' 'MAT' 'WMAPRO' Item0: 'pcm' Channel: Unavailable CurrentDesktop: XFCE Date: Thu Aug 17 05:37:00 2017 Extensions: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing ForcedLayersAccel: False IncompatibleExtensions: Unavailable (corrupt or non-existant compatibility.ini or extensions.sqlite) IpRoute: default via 192.168.10.1 dev eth0 default via 192.168.10.1 dev wlan0 proto static metric 600 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.10.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.10.107 192.168.10.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.10.108 metric 600 Locales: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing PciMultimedia: PciNetwork: Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=55.0.1/20170814194718 RfKill: 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no RunningIncompatibleAddons: False SourcePackage: firefox Themes: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/1711337/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp