Thank you for the URL.  There also is a Thunderbird ESR URL --

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/organizations/faq/

Evidently, all security issues are addressed in ESR -- hence the mass 
deployed versions on campus should be ESR.

The other issue is "compatibility".  The university insists on certain 
specific web based applications, including proprietary Blackboard and a 
specialized Oracle PeopleSoft application called the Common Management 
System (CMS).  Is there a means to verify that the current ESR release 
meets the requirements of these applications?

Yasha Karant

On 01/31/2013 12:56 AM, Sergio Ballestrero wrote:
>
> On 31 Jan 2013, at 09:46, Yasha Karant wrote:
>
>> My university network security unit requires that the latest
>> production releases of particular network applications be installed in
>> order to minimize security compromises on systems attached to the
>> university LAN.  These applications include typical web browsers and
>> IMAP email clients, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Chrome, and
>> MS Internet Explorer (the latter I personally only run within MS Win,
>> currently MS Win 7, under VirtualBox under Linux).
>>
>> Opera and Chrome install from the respective source vendors.  However,
>> both Firefox and Thunderbird are provided by TUV and thus SL, but at
>> release versions considerably lower than the current release from
>> Mozilla.   I have found a work around that allows the use of the
>> tar.bz2 installation from Mozilla on X86-64 SL6x, but one of our
>> technicians mentioned the use of a repository (Remi) that evidently
>> ports the current Mozilla production products to EL, including X86-64
>> EL6.  The relevant URLs appear below.
>>
>> Is anyone using this repository and these RPMs, and if so, what is the
>> experience of such use (e.g., are these faithful ports of the Mozilla
>> production applications that perform the same as current production
>> from Mozilla)?
>>
>> http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2011/install-firefox-on-fedora-centos-red-hat-rhel
>>
>> http://dev.antoinesolutions.com/remi-repository
>>
>> Yasha Karant
>
> Hello Yasha,
> please note that the FF and TB from TUV are fully updated for security -
> simply, they are from the Extended Support Release (ESR)
> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
>
> So your university requirements for security are already satisfied
> (possibly better satisfied), you don't need to move to the fast-release
> and less stable "general public" releases, unless you need the features
> and not the security.
>
> Cheers,
>    Sergio
>
> --
>   Sergio Ballestrero
>   ATLAS TDAQ sysadmin team
>
>
>
>
>
>