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Comment by techntoke | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla consistently putting Linux last yet claims to pride itself on open source

I'm a Linux user myself, but if I were building a product for commercial purposes, I'd prioritize building it for the platforms where the majority of the users are. Unfortunately, that majority isn't on Linux.

"Mac & Linux coming soon" is good enough for me for now.

I understand not prioritizing Linux for commercial purposes but Mac? General assumptions about people with Macs: 1. have disposable income 2. more likely to care about privacy.

I think they're literally just prioritizing by how many firefox users they have on each platform.

1) Market share for Mac is probably on a similar scale to that on Linux. In this case being low single digits. Of those users, a significant market share are likely not to be using Mozilla's products over Safari. Unlike Linux platforms where Mozilla products are the typical default.

2) Anyone on any of these platforms can likely afford 5 dollars a month. I don't even think platform plays a variable in this at all. It isn't like the unique iOS apps which bring value/features and are the only mechanism for attaining those given features.

In this case, there is plenty of competition already in play, and users can already pick a VPN provider if they want. Same can't be said for say a video editing app that is the only thing available on the iOS store.

3) Mac users care about privacy less than Linux users. A few weeks ago it was found that Catalina was sending a hash of every single program you run to Apple.

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/catalina-executables.htm...

Yep, Apple likely knows everything you could potentially be doing on your Mac. Not very private I would say.

I don't really agree with any of your assumptions in this case.

My message was ambiguous, I meant more likely to care about privacy than Windows and Android users not Linux users. 1 and 2 of what you said are good points tho.

How did you find that Mac users care more about privacy?

stronger privacy restrictions are part of the value proposition of the Apple ecosystem. For at least some part of the market that is what draws them to purchase Apple products.

It really isn't that much different or extra work to create a cross-platform app. They are rebranding a solution that already has Linux support. Besides, if larger companies started releasing on Linux first I'm sure those numbers would shift dramatically. Linux really is a superior desktop for developers and engineers.

People are downvoting this but it's a fact that Firefox got hardware accelerated video playback only this year on Linux.

VDPAU and VA-API have been around for years now, supported by VLC, mplayer, mpv, etc.

People are downvoting because it's comparing apples to oranges. It's perfectly acceptable, and smart even, to pride oneself on open source while treating the least dominant desktop OS as a second class citizen with regard to product offerings. It also comes off as a bit whiny, since it's abundantly clear from the first paragraph that there's no plans to shun Linux.

If you think Mozilla should prioritize profit over freedom and privacy then it doesn't sound acceptable or smart to me.

I guess if you are a Linux user, you dont really need Mozilla help to use a VPN

No, but even today people don't need help using a VPN. That isn't why Mozilla is offering an official branded VPN solution. It is because the name Mozilla is suppose to imply trust.

Linux users who are interested in Mozilla VPN can use Mullvad (the service that Mozilla VPN is rebranding and reselling) until it is released.

https://mullvad.net

Maybe they're just trying to buy themselves in into the 'missing markets.' Us linux people, "by the way^1", might suffer to wait for a while. It's a good move, in some ways, it's good to infiltrate Win and Android, first, actually, and then, they'll drop the logical bomb here too. I guess that's a good move. Actually.

^1 Arch Linux

Except they we wasting development cycles prioritizing platforms that are generally built on proprietary platforms. When you've got a bunch of telemetry and other services recording your VPN address after you've logged in using personally identifiable information, or they have fingerprinted you, then you are no longer anonymous.

Most Linux users get Firefox from distros, not from Mozilla directly.

Android is literally Linux.

I keep hearing this. How is it that in practice I can get my desktop to do anything I want, but I can't get my phone to do anything I want?

Make your desktop send a phone call natively i.e. not LTE/WiFi

How do you think phones make phone calls?

Because today, they use LTE.

However that has nothing to do with whether Android is Linux or whether one can make a desktop do whatever they want.

When you run 'Linux' on the desktop, you are running the Linux kernel with GNU userspace. The GNU project would rather you call it GNU/Linux, to pay homage to their hard work. That is too hard to say, so everybody simply says 'Linux'.

Android also runs the Linux kernel. However, the tools that allow you 'to do whatever you want' are not what you interact with. Android has its own userspace tools designed by Google. These are what you are familiar with. It used to be possible to use a terminal and sort of interact with an Android device like a desktop Linux computer, but that has slowly been disabled overtime.

Quite a bit of "whatever you want" is still possible on Android[1], though ideally you will have root, be comfortable using adb, etc. Ultimately the reason it's easier to do what you want on a linux desktop is that Google isn't actively trying to stop you there...

1: https://hackingpassion.com/android-hacking-with-termux/

Ouch. You know, I've heard many times about the GNU / Linux conversation but not being an expert I didn't really know where one starts and the other ends. So your comment has been extremely useful for me, thank you. And yes, we should pay more homage to GNU...

This gets to the controversy, "GNU/Linux" vs "Uses the Linux kernel"

https://www.fossmint.com/difference-between-android-and-linu...

>In Conclusion, Android is not a GNU/Linux distro but its Kernel is Linux and since it is the convention that a collection of software put together around the Linux Kernel is referred to as Linux, Android is Linux.

> * Android cannot run any programs that are meant for GNU/Linux distros

also;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

I believe GP was referring to GNU/Linux, often called 'Desktop Linux' or even just 'Linux'. Due to the fact that 'Linux' beat 'GNU/Linux' in the naming wars in the 90s, most people will never refer to Android as 'Linux'. Rather, Android/Linux is called 'Android'. While you are technically right that Android runs Linux, nobody says that 'Microsoft Word is now available for Linux' because its available on Android.

> nobody says that 'Microsoft Word is now available for Linux' because its available on Android

Some people do ;-)

Since GNU/Linux could also be very different from what most people would consider "Linux" I usually say "standard Linux" (or "standard Linux system" with very pedantic people).

This is a good idea. And yes I realize some people do say. that. I should have said 'most people do not say ...'

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