Reopening bug due to some changes prompted by further investigation. ### deterministic build One of the big reasons for initially going with Debian 10 was the deterministic build capability. Debian emphasizes this on their [wiki](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds). This was to avoid a repeat of Bug 1503756 where some changes in the package busted all of the Linux related CI. Thanks to investigative work by :aerickson it has been noted that Docker tag can be useful to implement a deterministic build: https://medium.com/@tariq.m.islam/container-deployments-a-lesson-in-deterministic-ops-a4a467b14a03 ---- ### window manager Both Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 10 have migrated to the GNOME window manager, which presents a few problems for the tests. Current test are written with the implicit assumption that Unity is the desktop window manager, but it has now been discontinued. This leads to some issues with window size detection, placement of some buttons and/or context menus as well as rendering of some text and fonts. Furthermore, both Debian 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 therefor require a workaround posted against https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1596526 due to the switch to GNOME shell relating to `pulseaudio` and `pacftl`. So both systems are on equal footing here. For some tests/suites, Ubuntu 18.04 has less failures, such as `reftest, `web-platform-tests-reftests` and `mochitest-devtools`. Debian 10 tends to have more issues with `reftests` that will require some additional greening work., ---- ### market share Last reason to reopen this bug is the market penetration of the distros. For Firefox Desktop on Linux, it is difficult to definitively say the proportion of market share but all telemetry, product manager opinions and anecdotal evidence points to Ubuntu taking the lion's share of the market, up to 80%. This is a strong argument in favor of continuing to use the Ubuntu distribution as baseline in CI, so we are testing against the most probable operating system for the target market.
Bug 1563864 Comment 6 Edit History
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Reopening bug due to some changes prompted by further investigation. ### deterministic build One of the big reasons for initially going with Debian 10 was the deterministic build capability. Debian emphasizes this on their [wiki](https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds). This was to avoid a repeat of Bug 1503756 where some changes in the package busted all of the Linux related CI. Thanks to investigative work by :aerickson it has been noted that Docker tag can be useful to implement a deterministic build: https://medium.com/@tariq.m.islam/container-deployments-a-lesson-in-deterministic-ops-a4a467b14a03 ---- ### window manager and audio driver issues Both Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 10 have migrated to the GNOME window manager, which presents a few problems for the tests. Current test are written with the implicit assumption that Unity is the desktop window manager, but it has now been discontinued. This leads to some issues with window size detection, placement of some buttons and/or context menus as well as rendering of some text and fonts. Furthermore, both Debian 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 therefor require a workaround posted against https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1596526 due to the switch to GNOME shell relating to `pulseaudio` and `pacftl`. So both systems are on equal footing here. For some tests/suites, Ubuntu 18.04 has less failures, such as `reftest`, `web-platform-tests-reftests` and `mochitest-devtools`. Debian 10 tends to have more issues with `reftests` that will require some additional greening work. ---- ### market share Last reason to reopen this bug is the market penetration of the distros. For Firefox Desktop on Linux, it is difficult to definitively say the proportion of market share but all telemetry, product manager opinions and anecdotal evidence points to Ubuntu taking the lion's share of the market, up to 80%. This is a strong argument in favor of continuing to use the Ubuntu distribution as baseline in CI, so we are testing against the most probable operating system for the target market.