It's a pretty ridiculous scheme done just to copy Chrome, but it also doesn't do much harm in practice. But browser version numbers no longer really have any useful or memorable meaning.
I have no fucking[0] idea if Firefox 99 is just a minor upgrade over Firefox 98 or it would completely change the UI and my UX with it. With X.YY to X+1.00 I could, at least, be warned what something crucial could change. Nowadays I'm the hostage of "We think you need to do things THAT way" of whatever fever at Mozilla corp at the moment.[1]
[0] I mean it.
[1] There was something about themes or colours or whatever in the last ten updates. Did you used it more for than a day?
They each release on a regular schedule. I don’t think that they have the same schedule. You can see each of them incrementing with each release. They have been doing this for several years now. It really is just chance they they are at 100 in roughly the same time.
Will you be proposing any alternative revenue streams for Mozilla to use? Do you even know what data is being sent to the two listed domains? Or do you just see pings and that annoys you?
> services.addons.mozilla.org
Have you tried turn off addon auto updates?
Could you please share what browser you use?
> they run updates automatically
This is a feature. Web browser updates are some of the most important updates on your device. Getting any lay person to update their browser is difficult.
>your browser stops working until you restart it
Untrue. Opening a new tab won't work, but your current tabs are still usable. Firefox will also open all your previously opened tabs after updating. Not really a huge disruption. I use Firefox on Windows and have never had this behavior fyi. Only on Linux.
This is a feature. Web browser updates are some of the most important updates on your device. Getting any lay person to update their browser is difficult.
A feature that keeps breaking my work every couple of weeks. It doesn't even allow me to restart when I'm ready. It forces me by not allowing me to open new tabs.
I want to have control of my browser, not the other way around.
The problem is that when the package manager does its updates it replaces Firefox' files while it is running, putting it into an inconsistent state, so Firefox rightfully enters a defensive mode and prevents you from doing stuff that could result in unpredictably broken behavior ("Why are new pages not loading correctly? Stupid fox, always breaking and needing to be restarted"). Blame Linux' package managers and Linux' liberal way of overwriting files that are in use*. On Windows, a Firefox-specific service takes care of updating the files in between runs, so you can continue using it until you want.
* See also the recent introduction of Offline Updates in SystemD, showing how "Linux can do updates on a running system and does not need to be restarted" was always a farce and invisibly broke stuff.
Are there any alternatives that don't do stuff like that?
For example, the only realistic mainstream alternatives, Edge and Chrome, have you literally logged into the browser with your MS/Google accounts, and can associate everything you do on the browser with your MS/Google account.
