Description of problem: Firefox keeps re-installing language packs Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): all How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1.update anything 2.check addons 3.The goddam things are back! Actual results: Reinstalls cruft inexcusable Expected results: let damn well alone Additional info: Find me one individual user who has any purpose for 10% of this most superfluous crud known to computing.One. You can't.
Yea, I'd really prefer all the different language support packages to be separate rpms I could choose not to install. It isn't so much the existence of them, but the time and bandwidth I waste downloading them over and over and over again with every firefox update (or which there seem to be a lot :-).
I agree, though my main gripe is that it's so hard to disable all 47 (or 83, or 159 or whatever) of them ONE BY ONE. Especially as this is immediately forgotten when you upgrade to a new version.
I disagree. The language packs take about 17MB. Adding 74 additional rpms to an already extensive collection seems to make little sense. Also, I can envision a poor end user experience when non-technical or novice end users find themselves without a particular rpm installed. Do we really want for people to have to know about the existence of the language packs? Some have suggested that language packs be installed based on some criteria of what is installed on the system. I can envision a complex installation with potential for dependency issues. This all seems like a lot of fuss over 17MB.
I don't have a problem with the 17MB. I do have a problem with the very clunky UI for controlling what languages are on or off, and the fact that (unlike all other FF configuration options) this is not remembered across version updates.
Every time firefox is updated (which seems to happen quite frequently), the next time I start it, it spends an hour grinding away at the disk and finally pops up a dialog that says it is checking all my plugins for compatibility with new version, that takes another two hours (OK, maybe the time involved is exaggerated slightly for effect :-). If I had fewer plugins, I'm guessing it would take less time to do this nonsense. Since the 47 gazillion language packs show up in the plugins dialog it pops up at the end of all the grinding above, I assume they all count as plugins for purposes of said grinding. I'd love for them to not be there so I could maybe remember why I started firefox by the time it actually comes up.
Just wanted to chime in with a me too over here. I agree with all the points mentioned in the previous comments: a. Installing lang packs for /all/ the languages by default is unnecessary b. Installing them in the 'enabled' by default state is unnecessary c. The UI to select and disable each lang pack individually is clunky d. The fact that the previous disabled state of the lang pack is not remembered after a firefox update is buggy cheers, - steve
FWIW, you can uninstall langpacks by running Firefox as root, and using the Add-ons tool to uninstall them. Keep in mind they will be uninstalled *globally* which means they'll be missing for all users of your system.
That tool is what I do now -- but I see no way to dump them all at once. What am I missing??
As root, rm -rf /usr/lib{,64}/firefox-*/extensions/langpack-* . Same thing.
Re: comment #9 -- When the package update comes, though, you'll likely be back at square one. I don't think the rpmlib sees those langpacks the same way as the .mo files in /usr/share/locale, so rpm's %_install_langs probably won't help.
Re comment #5: Isn't there any way to convince firefox that plugins which were packaged with and installed alongside FF don't need to be checked for compatibility? That would actually eliminate my biggest objection to the language packs. I think I have a total of about 3 plugins installed on top of the ones that come with FF or the fedora repos and are updated in sync with FF. I doubt it would take as long to check those three plugins for compatibility.
re: #11, I wish there were a way. But with twenty-odd add-ons (dunno how many are plugins) in firefox-3.5.2-2.fc11.i586, I usually get a notice with each update of Firefox proper, saying that some number of them is incompatible with this release. What's more, they often remain incompatible for days, sometimes weeks. Six of mine are greyed out now, even though it's been days if not weeks since Firefox itself was last updated. And I do at least one manual check for updates each day that I get online at all.
Sure. I'd expect it to need to check plugins I added "manually", but you'd think all the language packs which are shipped in the firefox rpm and packaged with it wouldn't need checking for compatibility :-). I'm just wondering if there is any way FF could be taught about those.
I just want to say "Me too!". It would be great if the language support in firefox is splitted into its own subpackages and each one added to their respective language support group in yum, this way firefox would integrate better with the rest of the system. And I guess this would be good for performance and memory consumption too. I hope someone at Red Hat is looking at this bug report.
Vote for this feature. I'm so unhappy to see all these unnecessary langpacks on my machine. BTW openoffice.org does have all its langpacks separated from main package.
Langpack selection has been introduced as a fix for Bug 284011. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 284011 ***