NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Users and developers helping users with generic and technical Pale Moon issues on all operating systems.

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Night Wing
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by Night Wing » 2018-08-21, 23:13

@ nevadacrab

It depends on what your settings are in Pale Moon.

Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Update

Under the Update tab, look at the Pale Moon Updates heading and see what is listed (checked by default).
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by nevadacrab » 2018-08-21, 23:20

Nigaikaze wrote:
nevadacrab wrote:when a new version of Pale Moon is available, I will get a pop up? Or it will update automatically?
Depends on what you have your preferences set to in Preferences > Advanced > Update, and whether or not your installation is in a user-writable directory/folder.

If it's user-writable and you have it set to "Automatically install updates," it will automatically install them.


Where do I find these settings in Peppermint 8 (Linux)? I checked Preferences > Advanced > Update in Pale Moon and only found a check box for "Automatically Update Search Engines"
Last edited by nevadacrab on 2018-08-21, 23:24, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by Night Wing » 2018-08-22, 00:20

nevadacrab wrote:Where do I find these settings in Peppermint 8 (Linux)? I checked Preferences > Advanced > Update in Pale Moon and only found a check box for "Automatically Update Search Engines"
Looks like your "Pale Moon Updates" settings are missing under Update. They are listed in my 64 bit linux Pale Moon 28.0.0 running 64 bit linux Mint 19 (Tara ) Xfce.
Last edited by Night Wing on 2018-08-22, 01:31, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by nevadacrab » 2018-08-22, 00:30

My Pale Moon is 32 bit. It shouldn't make any difference, should it?
I have Windows 10 on my PC, but Windows 7 dual booted with Peppermint Linux 8 on my HP Mini netbook. My 32-bit version of PM on Windows 7 gives all the aforementioned choices. My Mini will not run Windows 10 (incompatible hardware) so I'm getting a few extra years of use by running P8. My Mini is 32-bit, so I'm stuck running 32-bit software. It has not previously been a problem. I installed PM 28 from my Software Manager and it may or may not have overwritten PM 27 (It opens from the same shortcut). So I have no idea whether PM 28 will eventually update or not.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by greyowl » 2018-08-22, 00:37

nevadacrab wrote:My Pale Moon is 32 bit. It shouldn't make any difference, should it?
I have Windows 10 on my PC, but Windows 7 dual booted with Peppermint Linux 8 on my HP Mini netbook. My 32-bit version of PM on Windows 7 gives all the aforementioned choices. My Mini will not run Windows 10 (incompatible hardware) so I'm getting a few extra years of use by running P8. My Mini is 32-bit, so I'm stuck running 32-bit software. It has not previously been a problem. I installed PM 28 from my Software Manager and it may or may not have overwritten PM 27 (It opens from the same shortcut). So I have no idea whether PM 28 will eventually update or not.
Go to Help > About Pale Moon and it will show you which version you have.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by trava90 » 2018-08-22, 02:02

@nevadacrab if you installed Pale Moon from your software manager than all updates will be handled through the software manager as well. The internal updater is disabled on 3rd party builds so that it will not interfere with the software manager used by the distro.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by nevadacrab » 2018-08-22, 02:18

Cool, thank you very much.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by mr tribute » 2018-08-27, 23:07

trava90 wrote:
fillerup wrote:so it will function identically to Basilisk in the installing/updating department right?
Yes it will be the same functionality as Basilisk (and the current Pale Moon unstable channel).
fatboy wrote:This is a bummer.
Sorry. The pminstaller was originally hacked together as a short term help to people. It was never intended to be a long-term solution.
Why not keep the installer/uninstaller functionality in pminstaller? (because that functionality is not provided by Pale Moon). Are there any fundamental problems with it? Security or simply lack of time to maintain it?

I never had any problems with pminstaller and I think many Linux users appreciated the "Windows-like" install experience that pminstaller provided.

I agree that the update functionality is better handled by the Pale Moon application. I was hoping that maybe more projects would adopt pminstaller, because providing an installer to Linux users is a nice service. It's nicer than asking them to open a terminal and type this or that command... :mrgreen: pminstaller showed people that Linux doesn't have to be more complicated than Windows. It's just a (sometimes unfortunate) Linux tradition to install from repos instead of downloading an installer. I don't mind repos, but pminstaller was unique in the Linux world and could be viewed as a good example for developers of cross platform applications. It also nicely showcased that it is perfectly possible to create one PM binary for "all" Linux distros. (The amount of repackaging that is done in the Linux world is pretty crazy - 50 versions of Firefox, 20 versions of Pale Moon, because why not?).

Pminstaller made Linux users feel just as loved as Windows users. ;)
Last edited by mr tribute on 2018-08-27, 23:23, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by CraigPD » 2018-08-28, 00:26

Well stated. The internal updater may be functionally superior to pminstaller once the initial installation is in place but the option of having a user-friendly script file to establish all requisite file system permissions and desktop menu entries, particularly when trying to preserve both v27.x and v28.x profiles prior to complete migration once (minor) milestone kinks are worked out, would be ideal and highly preferable to launching individual desktop tarballs.

I followed Travis's detailed manual installation instructions (using /opt) which took more than an hour to successfully complete which otherwise would have been less than a 5-10 minute process. Please reconsider reinstating it, at least for the current stable channel.

mrabc

Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by mrabc » 2018-08-28, 09:59

I'd like to see the pminstaller back again too.

Please bring it back.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by Moonchild » 2018-08-28, 10:58

mrabc wrote:I'd like to see the pminstaller back again too.

Please bring it back.
It's not going to happen.
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by Isengrim » 2018-08-28, 11:28

pminstaller is open source and licensed under GPLv3. If someone really wants to keep using the tool, or a version of it, they can make a fork. Or you can write your own shell script that does something similar to the install/uninstall functions without the GUI and tailor it specifically to your needs.
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by trava90 » 2018-08-28, 14:12

Isengrim wrote:Or you can write your own shell script that does something similar to the install/uninstall functions without the GUI and tailor it specifically to your needs.
This is the proper solution to anyone still wanting to use the pminstaller.

Also remember that it's not necessary to "install" Pale Moon anywhere. If you don't know how (or can't) "install" it then just extract it to your desktop and let the updater do it's thing.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by Night Wing » 2018-08-28, 14:50

trava90 wrote:Also remember that it's not necessary to "install" Pale Moon anywhere. If you don't know how (or can't) "install" it then just extract it to your desktop and let the updater do it's thing
Since I'm not a fan of the linux terminal, I followed Travis' suggestion above and my 64 bit linux Pale Moon 28.0.0 is "NOT" installed when it is running in 64 bit linux Mint 19 (Tara) Xfce. Since my linux PM is not installed, it will not be listed under Internet in either of the old Applications Menu or the Whisker Menu. Since PM isn't listed, that means there is no Pale Moon launcher icon to start Pale Moon.

However, in the Pale Moon folder there are image files and it contains the Pale Moon logo. I've learned how to create the linux Pale Moon launcher icon and I place the launcher icon on the right side of my Mint Panel (taskbar) at the bottom of my monitor which you can see in the attachment below. You'll have to left click on the attachment to make it larger and easier to see. BTW, I did not put a PM launcher icon on my Desktop. I prefer it on my Panel (taskbar).

I can't speak for other linux distros, but in Mint with the Xfce desktop environment, it is not that difficult to make the Pale Moon launcher icon. It just takes a lot of steps mouse click wise. If you're not using Mint in Xfce, experiment in your distro of choice on how to create the PM launcher icon if linux Pale Moon is not installed.
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Last edited by Night Wing on 2018-08-28, 16:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by pmuser1234 » 2018-08-28, 16:18

so how do I update palemoon to the latest version if the installer isn't maintained? I'm getting an error saying "latest version number could not be retrieved. Please check network connection and try again."

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by mr tribute » 2018-08-28, 16:44

trava90 wrote:
Isengrim wrote:Or you can write your own shell script that does something similar to the install/uninstall functions without the GUI and tailor it specifically to your needs.
This is the proper solution to anyone still wanting to use the pminstaller.
Proper solution because of Wayland and not letting GUI applications run as root?

I don't think Windows users would be happy if they had to write a shell script to install an application. :mrgreen:

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by Isengrim » 2018-08-28, 17:21

pmuser1234 wrote:so how do I update palemoon to the latest version if the installer isn't maintained? I'm getting an error saying "latest version number could not be retrieved. Please check network connection and try again."
Check permissions on the directory where Pale Moon is located. Pale Moon can't save the downloaded file if it doesn't have permissions to write to its directory.
Off-topic:
mr tribute wrote:I don't think Windows users would be happy if they had to write a shell script to install an application. :mrgreen:
IMHO, that's because Windows shell scripting is terrible. ;) Having done both, I prefer Bash by far. All you need is a good guide and a little practice.

Also, the process for installing applications on Linux varies from distro to distro, so making a one-size-fits-all installer solution will always be a hack at best; in contrast, application installation procedures on Windows are pretty homogeneous, thus a Windows installer is much easier to deploy and maintain.
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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by trava90 » 2018-08-28, 17:30

mr tribute wrote:Proper solution because of Wayland and not letting GUI applications run as root?
No, proper solution for those who insist on using a script to "install" Pale Moon.
pmuser1234 wrote:so how do I update palemoon to the latest version if the installer isn't maintained? I'm getting an error saying "latest version number could not be retrieved. Please check network connection and try again."
See the first post in this thread.

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Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by vansloneker » 2018-09-01, 06:05

fatboy wrote:This is a bummer. I really enjoyed pminstaller :(
Same here. Worked like a charm.

After many failed attempts finally found this topic.
"The latest version number could not be retrieved" doesn't really give away pminstaller is exit.


As I understand now first has to install PM28* the hard way to get the internal updater to work.
I actually never use internal updaters. They always come at the wrong moment. Or they screw your setup.
Last edited by vansloneker on 2018-09-01, 06:08, edited 2 times in total.

pmuser1234

Re: NOTICE: pminstaller is no longer maintained

Unread post by pmuser1234 » 2018-09-02, 17:57

trava90 wrote:
mr tribute wrote:Proper solution because of Wayland and not letting GUI applications run as root?
No, proper solution for those who insist on using a script to "install" Pale Moon.
pmuser1234 wrote:so how do I update palemoon to the latest version if the installer isn't maintained? I'm getting an error saying "latest version number could not be retrieved. Please check network connection and try again."
See the first post in this thread.

I got pale moon linux to update successfully using your instructions, thank you. So now Pale Moon will update itself automatically?

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