Is there more technical information than this article provides? Did Firefox not have a .deb package until now? It's been a few years since I used Ubuntu, but I find that really surprising. I'm not sure what this new package is or how it differs.
Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
21–30 of 176 posts
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#22The missed the key 5th benefit: Allows you to sudo apt-get purge snapd without annoying unwanted consequences.
You didn’t have to wait for this new Firefox package to stop using snaps, did you?
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#23So, we have come full circle? There used to be a .deb repo, then there wasn't and now we have one again.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#24> 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…
The deb version does more than complain, it can also crash and have tabs crash due to needing restart.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#25> 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…
One of the benefits of kde offline updates is that this never happens, things are never updated while you are using them.
You need to restart from time to time though, I do it weekly.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#26They don't seem to be packaging the LTS version, Firefox ESR. Am I missing something? Is there a separate Mozilla repository for that?
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Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It does disable telemetry! This is the list I linked—it's all different types of automatic network connections, from anonymized telemetry to update checks to speculative connections.
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#28> 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…
> You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session.
I hated the required restart with a passion when they first started it because restoring the previous session often failed. Once that worked, it was merely miserable (you still have to log in to all your sites).
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#29> 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 expect this would still be a problem for this .deb. The package manger is doing the updating which is what causes the problem for Firefox.
The restart notice provides a way for Firefox to signal to the user that the binary on disk doesn't match the binary running. Without the warning Firefox used to randomly crash when creating new processes. The warning allows the user to perform an orderly restart (not great but neither are crashes).
As the parent states the tar.gz will avoid the problem as it uses Mozilla's update process that is used across platform. A minimum set of steps to use the tar.gz are
* Extract tar.gz to somewhere like /opt/firefox/
* Set the permissions so that the user or a group can read, write and execute /opt/firefox/
* Create or copy a Firefox.desktop file [1] and place it in the correct folder [2] so it shows up in your launcher
[1] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/de... [2] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ar01...
Re: Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
#30> 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…
One of the benefits of kde offline updates is that this never happens, things are never updated while you are using them. You need to restart from time to time though, I do it weekly.
Restarting your whole system is not necessary for the firefox flatpak though -- updates are installed in a parallel directory and applied the next time the user re-launches Firefox.