On Wed, May 02, 2018 at 11:06:32PM -0700, Chris Marusich wrote: > Clément Lassieur <clem...@lassieur.org> writes: > > > I find Icecat very buggy, even if I compare it to a home-made Firefox > > package that inherits Icecat (and thus is very close to Icecat). For > > example I can't even pay with my credit card with icecat-52-guix, > > whereas I can with firefox-home-52-guix. (It looks like a javascript > > issue.) Also, lots of videos don't work, and it's difficult to know > > whether it's because of technical issues or because of DRM. > > This has not been my experience with IceCat. With two exceptions, > IceCat has performed just as well as Firefox for me for everything I > have done, including credit card payments. I sometimes watch YouTube > videos using IceCat, but I don't view many other videos, so I can't > really comment on how well IceCat handles videos. If it requires DRM, > of course, it's not going to work in IceCat, which is a good thing. > > When I use IceCat over TOR, it doesn't always work. When I use IceCat > with extensions (plugins? add-ons? I'm not sure what the right > terminology is here) like NoScript enabled, it doesn't always work. But > when I don't use TOR and I disable those add-ons, everything works just > as well as stock Firefox. If you're still having trouble after > disabling those things, can you describe the specifics of what you're > having trouble with? > > The exceptions I have experienced with IceCat: > > 1) A website failed for me because IceCat enables Referer spoofing by > default (network.http.referer.spoofSource in about:config). I had to > disable that feature to use that website. > > 2) It used to be that IceCat would crash frequently for me. However, > once I changed my gfx.canvas.azure.backends and > gfx.content.azure.backends from "cairo" to "skia", this problem stopped > for me. I don't know if this is still an issue , since I haven't ever > switched it back to "cairo". See here for details: > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2016-11/msg00008.html
In my experience Icecat usually works. But sometimes it does not and it is usually a JavaScript thing. It would be nice to have firefox too. I agree with Clément that it is an important option for users and it is still a dominant browser. Currently we only can install it as binary blobs. Which are often broken in my setup. Pj.