In general, do you think Linux has trouble keeping browsers up to date? Do Ubuntu & Fedora folks have this problem too?
1. Old stable, the previous stable version and only receives security updates.
2. Stable, the current stable version. There is a massive amount of stability testing and security hardening that go into ever package before its allowed in this branch. This is usually a very long process and the packages are usually old.
3. Testing, This is where packages live while they are being tested for stable. This branch may be broken, but is generally working during the release cycle, and may not receive security updates in timely manner. 4. Un-stable, This is bleeding and mostly in broken state...
During the release cycle, packages are selected and brought closer and closer to 'stable' and move though the branches. At a certain time, the package version are frozen in a feature freeze, and are not allowed to have feature updates, only stability and security hardening. When are the packages are ready, the debian team releases alpha and beta builds to test everything. Then, and only then is a new stable released.
If every thing had the Q&A of debian, nothing would crash, but everything would be old.
This is the reason why so many people use one of the many distro based up of debian testing. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and many more are based off of testing, with newer packages and there own feature freeze. The ubuntu cycle tries work like clock work every 6 months and debian has more of "when its ready" mind set.
Debian Wheezy currently has version 31.3 (ESR) and will soon get 31.4 through stable-updates. Stable-security already has that version. In case you wonder what ESR is: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/
Generally speaking, Debian stable always receives the last ESR versions these days, except at the end of an ESR cycle, where Mozilla actually releases two ESR versions. So, for instance, at the end of life of ESR 24, Mozilla released both 24.8 and 31.0, and Debian stable received 24.8. The next update was to 31.1.
I can understand nagging for very old versions, but Web sites nagging about current ESR versions are being rude.
If you are interested in fresher Iceweasel backports, check out http://mozilla.debian.net/.
And if you'd rather have the Firy logo instead of the icy one, and know how to build Debian packages, just download the Iceweasel sources, and build with the following environment variable set: PRODUCT_NAME=firefox.
I just upgraded to Debian 8 and I'll try mozilla.debian.net after I get my desktop sorted.
Somehow obmenu is launching an older version of Iceweasel (version 13) and I never noticed till now :-/
If I launch "iceweasel" from a terminal I get version 31.
Oops!
Which websites refuse to work?
You could always just add the linux mint repositories and install the real firefox that way. http://superuser.com/questions/322376/how-to-install-the-rea... is old but the instructions in the top-rated answer still work.
Nothing refused to work, just nag messages on various websites. But Firebug, the highest I could go was something like version 1.5 and the older versions starting junking up my context menu. Figured it was time to upgrade and start a Hacker News rant ;-)
Also, the "about:" page should print out both the version and the user agent, you can see if they match.
I do not. I have to imagine Iceweasel is fairly old at this point considering Debian is usually behind whereas Fedora and Ubuntu are closer to bleeding edge--in fact thats a large part of why Iceweasel exists[0].
I get those messages if I am using FF. It's on 29 and I even tried to do the "old version" hack but it didn't work for me.
Chrome has, for some reason, decided to can upgraded to the current version--41. (I might be running beta, I can't remember.)
For Firefox we have a nag show at top of browser window for a few seconds if you are not on current ESR - https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ - the nag is there because it isn't worth our time testing obsolete versions for a handful of users (single page JavaScript/Ajax app, so new features can introduce breaks. in old browsers).
At this moment I'm upgrading Debian to Jessie which according to this https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/ is still "testing".
Typically I would just wait for the next stable version of Debian but for web development I want to get the latest Firebug.
I have been down this road before, it's just a pain.