Post by Kevin McAleavey on Mar 16, 2012 2:49:46 GMT -5
Reluctantly, we will be removing the Epiphany web browser from future releases of KNOS. Epiphany has been a part of KNOS since our first build back in 2006, and has been included in all of our versions ever since. Epiphany is part of the "Gnome project" and was a very nice lightweight browser. Unfortunately, the maintainers of Epiphany have failed to keep Epiphany up to modern requirements, most importantly the ability to handle 64 bit versions of plugins such as the Adobe Flash media player, requiring that KNOS only provide 32 bit functionality even in our 64 bit versions. Since both our 32 and 64 bit versions are designed to be functionally identical, this would result in incompatibilities that are unacceptable to our rigorous design standards.
While their design limitation may be acceptable in Linux, KNOS requires support for true 64 bit applications throughout our structure and the Epiphany maintainers, looking forward to Gnome 3 have decided not to support 64 bit plugins since they're not required in the next generation of Linux. While we can provide support for 32 bit applications in our 64 bit KNOS, it has always been important in the design of KNOS that all native system and application programs be fully 64 bit throughout our 64 bit version of KNOS.
What has forced this determination is that Epiphany doesn't fail gracefully on KNOS 64, it crashes, and does so rather dramatically when a site with Flash content is encountered. This problem turned up with their latest security fix release in KNOS 64 RC and there are no workarounds or fixes planned to resolve the problem by the developers.
Therefore Epiphany will no longer be included in future versions of KNOS and we will replace it with Chromium, a browser which does support 64 bit plugins natively. We regret having to do this, but the Epiphany project has made it clear that there are no plans for 64 bit compatibility and they are no longer planning to develop it further for our Gnome 2 based desktop structure. We have seen Gnome 3 and at this time have no plans to embrace it owing to user dissatisfaction with the changes currently in Gnome 3.
Therefore, reluctantly, Epiphany will be dropped.
While their design limitation may be acceptable in Linux, KNOS requires support for true 64 bit applications throughout our structure and the Epiphany maintainers, looking forward to Gnome 3 have decided not to support 64 bit plugins since they're not required in the next generation of Linux. While we can provide support for 32 bit applications in our 64 bit KNOS, it has always been important in the design of KNOS that all native system and application programs be fully 64 bit throughout our 64 bit version of KNOS.
What has forced this determination is that Epiphany doesn't fail gracefully on KNOS 64, it crashes, and does so rather dramatically when a site with Flash content is encountered. This problem turned up with their latest security fix release in KNOS 64 RC and there are no workarounds or fixes planned to resolve the problem by the developers.
Therefore Epiphany will no longer be included in future versions of KNOS and we will replace it with Chromium, a browser which does support 64 bit plugins natively. We regret having to do this, but the Epiphany project has made it clear that there are no plans for 64 bit compatibility and they are no longer planning to develop it further for our Gnome 2 based desktop structure. We have seen Gnome 3 and at this time have no plans to embrace it owing to user dissatisfaction with the changes currently in Gnome 3.
Therefore, reluctantly, Epiphany will be dropped.