Pale Moon SSE for Linux

For contributed third party builds not necessarily configured like the main product.
e.g. AVX builds, SSE builds, Pandora builds.
Walter Dnes
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-04-18, 09:57

Version 27.9.0 tarball is available for downloading. This is the last major development update for the v27 milestone (codenamed "Tycho"). After this, we will be focusing our efforts for new features entirely on UXP and the new v28 milestone building on it. We will continue to support v27.9 with security and stability updates for a while, but no major new features will be added from this point forward. Please read the full release notes at: http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml

The download URL for the SSE build is ftp://contrib:get@ftp.palemoon.org/SSE-Linux/palemoon-27.9.0SSE.linux-i686.tar.bz2

Since this is not a mainstream build, it has to be installed manually. See the first post in this thread for install instructions.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by coffeebreak » 2018-04-29, 08:14

Update to my older post:
coffeebreak wrote:In addition, uBlock Origin (the xul/"legacy" release) works well with Pale Moon.
It can be installed from uBO's GitHub repository (releases). The xul/"legacy" installer looks like this: uBlock0.firefox.xpi.

Starting with uBO 1.16.4, the xul/"legacy" installer looks like this: uBlock0.firefox-legacy.xpi

The former xul installer (uBlock0.firefox.xpi) will become the web-extension installer for releases later than 1.16.2.
(Though presumably it is still the xul installer for the earlier releases.)

Reasons: see Gorhill's comment, and this post.
Last edited by coffeebreak on 2018-04-29, 13:45, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by coffeebreak » 2018-04-29, 21:32

Update to my older post:
coffeebreak wrote:In addition, uBlock Origin (the xul/"legacy" release) works well with Pale Moon.
It can be installed from uBO's GitHub repository (releases). The xul/"legacy" installer looks like this: uBlock0.firefox.xpi.

The installation file for the xul version of uBO has changed to uBlock0.firefox-legacy.xpi. For details see this post.
Last edited by coffeebreak on 2018-04-29, 21:35, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-05-08, 13:12

[Version 27.9.1 tarball is available for downloading. This is a maintenance release. Please read the full release notes at: http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml

The download URL for the SSE build is ftp://contrib:get@ftp.palemoon.org/SSE-Linux/palemoon-27.9.1SSE.linux-i686.tar.bz2

Since this is not a mainstream build, it has to be installed manually. See the first post in this thread for install instructions.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-05-19, 15:54

Version 27.9.2 tarball is available for downloading. This is a security and stability release. Please read the full release notes at: http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml

The download URL for the SSE build is ftp://contrib:get@ftp.palemoon.org/SSE-Linux/palemoon-27.9.2SSE.linux-i686.tar.bz2

Since this is not a mainstream build, it has to be installed manually. See the first post in this thread for install instructions.
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Marius

Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Marius » 2018-05-31, 20:27

Hi Walter,

I tried for some days but unfortunately I can't get access to ftp.palemoon.org to download the sse-browser (timeout).

Is it a temporary problem or is there something wrong with the ftp-server or is the problem on my side?

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-01, 01:47

It looks like a server problem. I can't get it with my browser or log on manually with ftp from the commandline. I'll notify the admins.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Moonchild » 2018-06-01, 09:15

The IP address of the server has changed. Please try flushing your DNS cache and try again.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-01, 14:19

Does the command
nslookup ftp.palemoon.org
report the new IP address 80.255.0.190 after you refresh DNS?
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Marius » 2018-06-01, 23:02

Whatever the problem was and whatever you did to fix it, the link now works! Thanks for help!

P.S.:Yes, the command reports 80.255.0.190
Last edited by Marius on 2018-06-01, 23:08, edited 2 times in total.

Serpentine

Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Serpentine » 2018-06-11, 03:06

Hi Walter,

I just wanted to say:
Thank you for this up-to-date SSE-only build I just stumbled upon!
Pale Moon works like a charm on my AMD Athlon XP again.

P.S.: May I ask you if you know an e-mail client working without SSE2? Recent Thunderbird stopped working and the old versions are full of vulnerabilities. I searched several days already without any useful result.

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-11, 08:40

Serpentine wrote:P.S.: May I ask you if you know an e-mail client working without SSE2? Recent Thunderbird stopped working and the old versions are full of vulnerabilities. I searched several days already without any useful result.
Sorry; I use mutt (text-based) at home, so I'm not familiar with GUI clients.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-12, 20:58

Version 27.9.3 tarball is available for downloading. This is a small security update. Please read the full release notes at: http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml

The download URL for the SSE build is ftp://contrib:get@ftp.palemoon.org/SSE-Linux/palemoon-27.9.3SSE.linux-i686.tar.bz2

Since this is not a mainstream build, it has to be installed manually. See the first post in this thread for install instructions.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-17, 23:06

As of Pale Moon 28.0.0 there will be no more SSE builds. The official announcement is at https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=19416 I'll do any potential interim security builds e.g. 27.9.4 or 27.9.5 but the SSE builds will end with the official release of PM 28.0.0, built on the UXP base. The new code base cannot be built to run on Lucid Puppy. Even if the binary was compiled as SSE-only, running PM 28 (more memory) on a newer OS (more memory) would be a very painfull experience on a Pentium3 machine that doesn't meet the 512 megabyte minimum RAM limit.
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AthlonXPUser

Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by AthlonXPUser » 2018-06-28, 20:04

Hi,

Is it only because of the RAM requirement? Because Athlon XPs also don't have SSE2 but they can have 3.5GB of RAM easily. Also its clock speed is usually around 2-2.3GHz and if you have a dual CPU setup with 2x2.33GHz then it wouldn't be a "painful experience" at all to use it.

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-28, 23:08

The major showstopper is that SSE2 is a requirement for Pale Moon 28. Unfortunately, "the modern web" is getting more resource-intensive (graphics, HTML5, javascript crud like node-js, etc). Running with SSE-only would be slow. To take full advantage of Athlon-XP abilities would require re-writing sections of Pale Moon to use "3DNow!" and "enhanced 3DNow!" code to substitute for SSE2. The athlon-4/athlon-xp/athlon-mp is a very narrow market segment to code for. Earlier AMDs don't have full SSE support. Later AMDs have full SSE2 support.

A couple of other compatibility issues force jumping from CentOS 6.5 to CentOS 7.2 as the minimal build environment, which means building against later libraries.
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by AthlonXPUser » 2018-06-29, 03:58

No need to hardcode 3DNow! instructions, I know it would be a lot of work. It is not a problem if it is slow, if at least it is working. Isn't it just a compiler flag to not emit SSE2 opcodes into the binary? Are there hardcoded SSE2 assembly instructions in the Pale Moon source code? I never looked at it. Normally a Linux program is written in C so it can be compiled to any CPU. I don't know about Puppy Linux or CentOS, I'm using Pale Moon SSE on Lubuntu and it works fine.
Last edited by AthlonXPUser on 2018-06-29, 03:59, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-29, 07:39

The Pale Moon build system does indeed directly emit assembler code. Note the developer webpage https://developer.palemoon.org/Developer_Guide:Build_Instructions/Pale_Moon/Linux which mentions that you have to install "yasm" in order to be able to build Pale Moon. "yasm" directly puts out machine-language code (aasembler) http://yasm.tortall.net/. Straight C/C++ simply doesn't hack it when trying to decode+display Youtube 1080P (or higher) videos fullscreen without stuttering.

Just as SSE-specific assembler code is a major step beyond C/C++, SSE2 is a major step beyond SSE. Adobe gave up on SSE-only Adobe-Flash plugin for linux over 6 years ago. https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/FP-3161034. The reason newer video codecs like H265, VP9, WebM, etc are faster is because they directly use the newer instruction sets.

Up til now, the PM 27 build process has used "#ifdef" to take different paths if the "-msse2" flag is/isn't specified. As more sites migrate to codecs where SSE isn't good enough, it's not worth it to keep the extra code around for processors that were introduced in 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon#Athlon_XP/MP
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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by AthlonXPUser » 2018-06-29, 15:12

Neither Adobe or Microsoft broke machines without SSE2 deliberately, it was purely a developer mistake which they didn't want to admit and fix because they just didn't care.
Microsoft case:
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/p ... 7-patches/
Article:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... uters.html

In the Adobe case dozens of people were willing to help Adobe to test and so on, Adobe just played that they are dumb and that they don't understand the problem.

I don't really care about 1080p, lower resolutions would be OK too, but I could still download the video via hooktube.com and then play them back with VLC which has hardware acceleration where my GPU comes and help.

I checked the Firefox source, it is full of ifdefs for ARM, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4, AVX, etc. Most ifdefs are for SSE2, but there still a lot remains for ARM (Neon), SSSE3, etc. They could keep the support for machines without SSE2, they just don't care. They should clean up their code at least, because they still have the ifdefs everywhere for SSE2. They argued that they drop support of machines without SSE2, because this way the source is lighter and easier to maintain and test, still they have junk code all over the place because they didn't bother to clean up the MMX, SSE, SSE2 code paths.

They utilize SSE2 not just for video playback, but also for audio, image rendering/processing, I guess for general CSS rendering too. It is also used for text processing, WebAssembly trickery, and some more. So it is really used at a lot of places. I was thinking, OK, I don't care about video playback, but it is not that easy to just delete the code regarding video playback, because a lot of other stuff relies on SSE2 too.

Firefox 52 ESR won't be getting security updates after September, and I don't know any other web browser which doesn't require SSE2 and still receives security updates. Except Lynx. Do you know any other alternative? Basic HTML rendering would be enough, everything which is a little bit better than Lynx (like anything, really).
Last edited by AthlonXPUser on 2018-06-29, 15:24, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Pale Moon SSE for Linux

Unread post by Walter Dnes » 2018-06-29, 21:36

AthlonXPUser wrote:Firefox 52 ESR won't be getting security updates after September, and I don't know any other web browser which doesn't require SSE2 and still receives security updates. Except Lynx. Do you know any other alternative? Basic HTML rendering would be enough, everything which is a little bit better than Lynx (like anything, really).
Sorry to see you go, but I understand your situation. A few suggestions... These browsers target a different "market" than Pale Moon. You might be part of their target market.
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