Doesn't hardware accelerated graphics on Firefox on Linux require modifying a preference? AFAIK you need to go to about:config and enable layers.acceleration.force-enabled. (This is speaking as someone who uses Firefox on Linux as my main browser.) The bug for enabling hardware rendering by default on some systems appears to still be open: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876
Just set these in your $HOME/.profile
export MOZ_WEBRENDER=1
export MOZ_ACCELERATED=1