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• Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is available for many Operating Systems, on desktop and mobile.

Installing Firefox

From Debian packages

On DebianStable, Install the firefox-esr package.

This installs the Extended Support Release of Firefox. ESRs are not updated with new features every six weeks. They are instead supported for more than a year, updating with major security or stability fixes.

Support for languages other than English is available in packages named firefox-esr-l10n*.

On DebianUnstable, to install the Release version of Firefox, install the firefox package.

From Mozilla binaries

Mozilla distributes ready-to-use Firefox binaries for Linux on their website:

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ - Release

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/#beta - Beta

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/#nightly - Nightly

To install any of them on DebianStable:

• Download the Firefox version you want directly from the official website
• Uncompress the archives:

  • in the /opt directory (system-wide installation - requires Root privileges)

  • in your home directory (install only for the current user)

• Create a file firefox-stable.desktop (replace stable with beta or nightly if needed) with the contents below:

  • in the /usr/share/applications directory (system-wide installation - requires Root privileges)

  • in the ~/.local/share/applications directory (install only for the current user)

  • [Desktop Entry]
    Name=Firefox Stable
    Comment=Web Browser
    Exec=/opt/firefox/firefox %u
    Terminal=false
    Type=Application
    Icon=/opt/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
    Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
    MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
    StartupNotify=true
    Actions=Private;
    
    [Desktop Action Private]
    Exec=/opt/firefox/firefox --private-window %u
    Name=Open in private mode

• Replace /opt/firefox with the path to the directory where you extracted the archive.

• If you want to be able to launch Firefox from a CommandLineInterface, create a symlink to the firefox executable in /usr/local/bin/. For example: sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox

• If you want to use your manually installed Firefox as the default DebianAlternatives browser (x-www-browser), run sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /opt/firefox/firefox 200 && sudo update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /opt/firefox/firefox 

From Flathub

Mozilla provides an official FlatPak at FlatHub.

If you haven't already set up flatpak, run

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Install it:

flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox

Run it:

flatpak run org.mozilla.firefox

If you have added /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin to your PATH, you can also run it with the command

org.mozilla.firefox

• If you want to use your Firefox flatpak as the default DebianAlternatives browser (x-www-browser), run

  sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.mozilla.firefox 200 && sudo update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.mozilla.firefox

Flatpaks don't support native messaging. Therefore, add-ons which rely on it such as KeePassXC Browser don't work. A workaround for KeePassXC is described in the Flathub forum. Since the KeePassXC's socket has been renamed in KeePassXC 2.6, for this version you need to tweak the solution as described in comment #3

Using snap

Mozilla provides an official Snap package for Firefox:

If you haven't already installed snapd, run

sudo apt install snapd

Install it:

sudo snap install firefox

Run it:

snap run firefox

Snap packages don't support native messaging. Therefore, add-ons which rely on it such as KeePassXC Browser don't work. Since KeePassXC's server socket has been renamed, you need to tweak the workaround as explained in https://discourse.flathub.org/t/how-to-run-firefox-and-keepassxc-in-a-flatpak-and-get-the-keepassxc-browser-add-on-to-work/437/3?u=jro

Migrating from Debian's Firefox to Upstream's

First install Firefox as described in the chapter Installing Firefox -> From Mozilla binaries.

Upon first starting the new upstream Firefox, the new upstream Firefox will start with a new, fresh, empty profile. If you do not want that, but want to keep using your previous bookmarks, settings, extensions and so on, then terminate Firefox and start it like this:

./firefox --ProfileManager

You'll be presented with available profiles. The new, fresh profile will probably be named default-esr-1 (if you are using an ESR release Firefox). The profile that you were using before, with Debian's Firefox, will probably be named default-esr (if you had not renamed it in the past). Select the default-esr profile. Now check that everything works fine, because it might be that a new Firefox will not be able to cope with the profile of an old Firefox. If you are happy, then next time you start Firefox, then do it again by running ./firefox --ProfileManager and make sure your old profile is selected as the default one.

Attention: when terminating Firefox cleanly, Firefox will ask you if you really want to close the N currently open tabs. If you confirm then on the next start Firefox will have lost your currently open tabs. What you can do instead to terminate Firefox and preserve your session - that is the currently open tabs - is to look up the main Firefox process and to kill it. That way Firefox will ask you next time, whether you want to restore the session and tabs it had before it was killed. All this might be not clean and you might loose data that you were entering in forms before you killed Firefox, so think about it before killing Firefox this way.

Hardware Video Acceleration

This is for Debian 11 / Bullseye

Setup your system and install required packages: https://wiki.debian.org/HardwareVideoAcceleration

Starting around version 95 Firefox has enabled hardware video acceleration via VA-API but still needs to be manually turned on. firefox-esr version 102 is available from the Debian Security repositories for Debian 11 since 2022-09-23.

Enter about:config in address bar:

Then launch firefox based on whether you use X11 or Wayland:

e.g. .desktop launcher command for X11 and Mozilla binary:

Exec=env MOZ_X11_EGL=1 /home/user/firefox/firefox

For version 96 and above, the above settings may change.

Intel

intel-gpu-tools

# intel_gpu_top

intel_gpu_top will show the video engine being used if hardware video acceleration is working. So long as it is above 0%, it is working.

Disable AV1 codec

If vainfo shows your hardware supports AV1 decoding, leave this enabled.

A lot of hardware does not support hardware decoding of AV1. You can disable the codec, so sites like youtube will fall back to h.264/h.265 or VP8/VP9 which is supported. This will save your battery and/or reduce power consumption/CPU load.

Enter about:config in address bar:

Note: If the website only has AV1 video available, no video will be displayed at all.

Profile

Firefox user data (your home page, toolbars, installed extensions, passwords, bookmarks...) are stored in a profile folder. (See this Mozilla support page).

• ~/.mozilla/firefox/: location of profile directorie, for flatpak installations, it is ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/

• /etc/firefox-esr/default/profile/: Files to copy to newly created profiles. Use this location to preconfigure Firefox.

• ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.*/user.js: firefox preferences for each profile. These preferences can also be set from the browser interface, or from the about:config page.

• /etc/firefox-esr/firefox-esr.js: default Firefox system-wide preferences. Each profile/user can override these preferences.

• You can start the Profile Manager from Firefox or from the command line: firefox --no-remote -P

* If firefox refuses to start with the existing profile because the version of firefox launched is supposedly not compatible, you can try removing the file compatibility.ini within the profiles directory. You may want to back up the profiles directory first, in case of an actual incompatibility.

find ~/.mozilla.firefox/ -name compatibility.ini -exec rm '{}' \;

or, if you are using flatpak

find ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/ -name compatibility.ini -exec rm '{}' \;

Disabling automatic connections

Firefox makes a number of automated connections to Mozilla's (and other's) servers without explicitly asking the user for approval. Mozilla documents that list in the How to stop Firefox from making automatic connections page. Here is a table of the above parameters and how Debian diverges from the upstream default:

Other projects aim at improving security and privacy in Firefox:

• NoScript - addon JavaScript monitor written by Giorgio Maone.

• TorBrowser - Firefox-based Web browser aimed at defending against tracking, surveillance, and censorship.

• https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js - Firefox configuration hardening

• https://gitlab.com/anarcat/scripts/blob/master/firefox-tmp - Anarcat's firefox-tmp script

• uMatrix (pronounced micromatrix) add-on written by Raymond Hill.

Plugins

NPAPI plugins are no longer supported in Firefox as of version 85: Mozilla Firefox no longer supports NPAPI plugins

Troubleshooting

Firefox is consistently crashing on a website:

• Run firefox in safe mode (extensions and themes disabled): firefox --safe-mode

• If this fixes the problem, one of your extensions is the root cause, if not:

• Create a new firefox profile: firefox --no-remote -P (or from the about:profiles page)

No sound:

Go through the general Sound troubleshooting steps. If this fails, reinstall alsa and pulseaudio:

sudo apt remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo apt install alsa-base pulseaudio

Iceweasel

From Debian Etch through Debian Jessie (9th June 2016), Mozilla Firefox was not available in Debian with the official name or branding. Instead, Debian shipped a free-software version rebranded by Debian, named Iceweasel. This fork was maintained because of a disagreement with Mozilla regarding backporting of the security fixes to DebianStable, and as the result could not use trademarked Mozilla artwork.

Starting from DebianStretch, the iceweasel package has been made a transitional package for firefox-esr. Normal Debian support policies, including patches for bug fixes, apply to the package.

• https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/10/msg00665.html - Will IceWeasel be based on a fork or on vanilla FireFox?

• https://lwn.net/Articles/676799/ - The end of the Iceweasel Age

• https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=815006 - Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

Iceweasel used to require gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-good packages for good video playback support.

External links

• Mozilla Firefox Homepage

• Debian Mozilla Team

• Firefox - Arch Wiki

• #debian-mozilla IRC channel

CategoryWebBrowser | CategorySoftware | CategoryNetworkApplication | CategoryRedundant: merge relevant info from Mozilla