567679 - Include the Linux distro name/version in all user agent strings

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Ethan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.342.9 Safari/533.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100423 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.3

If an Ubuntu user downloads a Firefox nightly, it identifies itself as running on Linux, but not on Ubuntu, making web statistics less valuable to everyone.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download Firefox for 'linux'
2. execute it somehow
3. go to whatsmyuseragent.com/
Actual Results:  
It says I'm on Linux

Expected Results:  
It should have identified my OS as Ubuntu Lucid (32 bit Intel) by running and parsing uname on first run.

Comment 1

[Ethan]

The useragent I pasted into the bug form is only correct because I'm running the version of Firefox that came with Ubuntu.

Comment 2

[Dave Garrett]

The user agent identifies the browser, not the system. (i.e. the "agent" of the user that's accessing things) The distro name only really belongs in the UA when it's that distro's build.

Comment 3

[Ethan]

As an end user, it is more important to me that my useragent identifies my OS than it identify the actual browser.  I expect to be given W3C compliant code regardless of this string.  When useragents are integrated into actual code paths, people just get discriminated against, like how my mom has to use an extension to lie to government web sites about her browser so she can log in and whatever else.

I just want correct statistics.

Comment 4

[Philip Chee]

Moving component DevTools=>General but probably should be in Core or toolkit.
Probably WONTFIX however.

Comment 5

[Dave Garrett]

By the way, the "Linux i686" part is already derived from "uname -sm".
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/User_Agent_Strings_Reference

I'm running Kubuntu Lucid and what I get with "uname --all" is:
Linux dave-laptop 2.6.32-22-generic 
#33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:27:30 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

I don't think the info you're looking for is in uname as stated. I'll just rename the bug to state the intent instead.

I agree with Philip that this is probably WONTFIX, not just because UAs aren't really for this but also because of plenty of other arguments in the other direction to limit exposed info for privacy reasons.

Comment 6

[Philip Chee]

Also the current trend is towards shorter UA strings not longer.

Comment 7

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

bug 57555 wants a shorter UA, see also bug 566423

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

The purpose of user agent strings is not to enable Linux distribution popularity contests.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/User_Agent_Strings_Reference documents how the amount of information about the Linux used was _reduced_ for security reasons. I don't think we are planning to revisit that decision.

Gerv