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Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
11–20 of 176 posts
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#12[flagged]
This seems harsh considering they're still making the only true user-agent in the world. Which maintainer are you trusting so much, and what anti-features are they removing?
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#13[flagged]
The anti-features that I'm aware of are runtime configuration flags and profile settings.
Having an official build from Mozilla makes a supply chain attack harder.
Additionally, they claim to compile with PGO, which random builds may not have.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#14> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it): it needs to close the files from the old package and open the ones from the new package. Hence the restart. You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session.
The flatpak build avoids this problem by keeping both versions on the disk, up until you stop the app. Only at this time, the old version is removed, and the next start will be the new version.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I can tell, the “Ubuntu Mozilla Team” does not consist of people from Mozilla but rather just people packaging Mozilla software for Ubuntu. The latest packages in that PPA have been uploaded by Rico Tzschichholz, who does not appear to be affiliated with Mozilla.
This is confusing because it’s posted on Mozilla’s official site
The thing posted on Mozilla's website (the OP) is official. The PPA posted at the root of this comment thread isn't.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#16> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
I’m not sure about these stable packages, but for the nightly packages they introduced recently they explicitly mention on [1] that you can keep browsing:
> Following community discussions, we have updated the post to highlight that Firefox can continue browsing after an APT upgrade, allowing people to restart at their convenience.
[1]: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozi...
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#17[flagged]
What anti-features do Debian's maintainers remove from Firefox, in practice? (Meaning the one they've already been maintaining for a while, a firefox-esr package. There's also an upcoming one for the normal release cadence). edit: Answering my own question, https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#Disabling_automatic_connecti... ( "Here is a table of the above parameters and how Debian diverges from the upstream default:" ) L…
Huh, that's interesting - I've definitely used distro packages that disabled some(?) of the telemetry stuff. If Debian doesn't, I wonder what distro I'm remembering. Or maybe they used to and just don't now.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#18> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it): it needs to close the files from the old package and open the ones from the new package. Hence the restart. You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session. The flatpak build avoids this problem by keeping both versions on the disk, up until you stop the app. Only at this t…
> it just doesn't complain about it
This is the key point. I'm assuming that it downloads the update and then waits for me to agree to install it, but however it works it doesn't interrupt my browsing while I'm in the middle of something.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#19They don't seem to be packaging the LTS version, Firefox ESR. Am I missing something? Is there a separate Mozilla repository for that?
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#20> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this ann…
I’m not sure about these stable packages, but for the nightly packages they introduced recently they explicitly mention on [1] that you can keep browsing: > Following community discussions, we have updated the post to highlight that Firefox can continue browsing after an APT upgrade, allowing people to restart at their convenience. [1]: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozi...
Oh, that's great! Between that very clear statement and the fact that in this post they call out that "you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version", it sounds like they've finally fixed it!