Firefox print freeze solved by iptables rules on Debian Linux

Firefox is a web browser you use to view web pages.

Try these if Firefox hangs when you press Ctrl + P to print:

# allow local connections to port 631

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 631 -s 127.0.0.1 -d 127.0.0.1 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 631 -s 127.0.0.1 -d 127.0.0.1 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 631 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 631 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 631 -s ::1 -d ::1 -j ACCEPT
ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 631 -s ::1 -d ::1 -j ACCEPT
ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 631 -j DROP
ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 631 -j DROP
ip6tables -A INPUT -j DROP

# save across reboot
netfilter-persistent save

iptables -L -n
ip6tables -L -n

No more Google Chrome support

Reportedly, Google will stop supporting Google Chrome on some platforms. What does this mean? For 32-bit Linux users, this could be bad news. For users of older operating systems, this could be bad news too.

That is why having a private company controlling a piece of software could create some trouble for some users. Private companies are companies which want to make a lot of money, or to save a lot of money. In my opinion, Google could save some money by this end of support.

The result is that Google appears to be more like Microsoft. Drop the support for Windows XP. Drop the support for Windows Vista. Drop the support for Windows 7. You could check the "support retired" information.

I remember "the web is the OS", which seemed unrealistic in the past. Now, we have concepts called "cloud" and "cloud computing" as people move or copy their data to servers.

Google dropping support for its Google Chrome is like ending the support for an OS. So soon?

Debian Wheezy was released on May 4th, 2013. Google is supposed to say goodbye to Chrome on Wheezy in March 2016. Oh, just about three years. What a revolution, in my mind!

Google appears to adopt the strategies Microsoft uses: Retire products as frequently as possible and force users to upgrade whatever has worked for them. See, Google Chrome on Android is updated quite frequently. A number of Google Chrome users complained that this web browser crashed upon the latest update.

Little One is one of those users, and commented, "You where small and elegant You've grow a lot since we met.NOW you are stock on my phone and use a fair amount of space but I can't remove you so therefore I will live and learn. No big deal when you have 12GBP of storage" (Original comments without my editing)

Has Google Chrome evolved to the better side of the world? Is there a "worst of the worst" software update competition going on?

Is the users' wish to keep things stable, old and useful unacceptable in this changing world?


Michael Backus is another Google Chrome on Android user, and commented, "Have always liked it. But there seems to be less customisation with each update Recently my frequently viewed pages have gone missing from both my nexus 9 and nexus 4. Do I need to revert back to an earlier version to get this back or is there options for this anywhere?" (Original comments without my editing)

Comments were retrieved on December 2nd, 2015. Microsoft like the term "downgrade rights". Microsoft says, "Downgrade and down-edition rights are an end-user right that Microsoft offers to customers for certain OEM products which meet the technical requirements for a Windows software downgrade."
 
Does Google provide some "downgrade rights" for the Chrome browser?

 "Interesting," I thought. Why would a user want to downgrade in the first place? Is the "old" software better than the "new" software? What functions went missing in the new version? What functions changed in the new version?

Should software changes be so frequent if you are a user who relies on that software for your critical work or life?

Okay, apart from Google Chrome, please consider using other web browsers.

Opera and Firefox seem to be viable alternatives.

Let's take a look. Firefox (Version 42.0) supports:

Windows XP SP2
Windows Server 2003 SP1
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10

, and on Linux,

GTK+ 2.18 or higher
GLib 2.22 or higher
Pango 1.14 or higher
X.Org 1.0 or higher (1.7 or higher is recommended)
libstdc++ 4.3 or higher


The Opera browser recommends:

Windows
Windows XP or later

Linux
Ubuntu 14.04 or later








Wikipedia tells me that Linux's desktop market share is still very small. It is estimated that less than three per cent of the web clients are on Ubuntu, Debian and other Linux operating systems (excluding Android). Google may be right in giving up some Linux versions. Android is more popular than these Linux systems.

Google Chrome's end of support may help us to rethink what should be the best practice in supporting the products.

Is the software's life supposed to be so short?

Vertical text in the Chinese language

I refer to an experimental feature in Firefox.

To enable this feature, type:

about:config

in the address bar.

Enter this line below:

layout.css.vertical-text.enabled

to search.

Press enter.

Double-click this preference name.

You should see the screen below:

Now you should see the vertical text.

Technical details:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/writing-mode

I modified a sample HTML file with CSS based on the valuable advice:

http://generatedcontent.org/post/45384206019/writing-modes

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/444684/OpenWebDemos/css3writingModes/japanese.html

Firefox used:

Firefox version 40.0.3.

---

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
        <meta charset="utf-8" />
        <title></title>
        <style>
                html {
                        font-size: 10px;
                        width: 100%;
                }
                body {
                        font-size: 1.5rem;
                        background-color: #eee;
                }
                
                article {
                        width: 1024px;
                        margin: 2rem auto;
                        padding: 5rem 0;

                        background-color: white;
                        box-shadow: 0 0 5px silver;
                        /**font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif;**/
                        color: #555;
                }
                header {
                        width: 100%;
                        height: 34rem;
                        margin-bottom: 8rem;

                        background-image: url("x");
                        background-size: 100% auto;
                        
                        -ms-writing-mode: tb-rl; /* old syntax. IE */
                        -webkit-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
                        -moz-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
                        -ms-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
                        writing-mode: vertical-rl; /* new syntax */       
                }
                
                h1 {
                        text-shadow: 0 1px 1px grey;
                        color: white;
                        font-weight: bold;
                        font-size: 3rem;
                        padding: 11rem 12rem 0 0;        
                }        
                section {
                        -ms-writing-mode: tb-rl; /* old syntax. IE */
                        -webkit-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
                        -moz-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
                        -ms-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
                        writing-mode: vertical-rl; /* new syntax */


                /**     below: '-' can become '|'; it looks strange...
                /**     -webkit-text-orientation: upright;
                        -moz-text-orientation: upright;
                        -ms-text-orientation: upright;
                        text-orientation: upright;  ** /

                        font-size: 2.2rem;
                        margin-left: 5rem;
                        height: 30rem;                  
                }
                
                section p {
                        text-indent: 2.3rem;
                        margin: 4.6rem;
                        text-align: justify;
                }  
                
                footer { 
                    margin: 0 auto;
                    width: 1280px;
                    color: grey;
                }
        </style>
</head>
<body>
        <article>
                <header>
                        <h1></h1>
                </header>
                <section>
                        <h2>唐朝</h2>
                        <p>唐朝是中國歷史上繼漢朝之後的另一個盛世。共歷289年，22位皇帝。由唐高祖李淵所建立，與隋朝合稱隋唐。</p>
                        <p>唐朝全盛時在文化、科技、政治、經濟、外交等方面都達到了很高的成就。在中國歷史上有大量的科技發明，四大發明之中有兩個即火藥和印刷術都誕生於唐朝。</p>
                        <p>唐朝時期漫長，大致上可以分成前期與後期。其分界點可按政治與經濟角度區分成安史之亂與兩稅法的頒布。安史之亂之前，唐朝國力強盛，經濟繁榮，武將四處開疆拓土，文臣穩定朝政，是唐朝的鼎盛時期。</p>
                </section>
                
        </article>
        <footer>
            <small>Text taken from the Chinese Wikipedia article: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/唐朝</small>
        </footer>
</body>
</html>

---