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    # apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-good apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-good

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Official Iceweasel Icon, used in Debian Package - by Ricardo Fernandez Fuentes (Tri-licensed under Gnu GPL, Gnu LGPL, and Mozilla Public License)

What is Iceweasel?

Iceweasel is a fork [from Firefox] with the following purpose :

  1. backporting of security fixes to declared Debian stable version.

  2. no inclusion of trademarked Mozilla artwork (because of #1 above)

Beyond that, they will be basically identical. (quoting Roberto C. Sanchez post in debian-devel mailing list)

Firefox resumes distribution in Debian

As documented at the article The end of the Iceweasel Age, Firefox is now in Debian again with the official name and branding.

At Mozilla's request (see 815006), Debian now contains Mozilla “Firefox ESR” (Extended Support Release) as the firefox-esr package. Normal Debian support policies, including patches for bug fixes, apply to the package.

How to install Iceweasel (Firefox)

In Debian Stretch and later, the package iceweasel is a transitional package which installs the firefox-esr package.

<!> As of 9th of June, 2016 the package Firefox-ESR replaces Iceweasel, and is in Wheezy and Jessie security repositories.

In Debian earlier than Stretch, the iceweasel package is a transitional package for Firefox-ESR as described above. It can be installed from the Debian repositories with.

# aptitude install iceweasel
  • or

# apt-get install iceweasel

Localisation packages (such as firefox-esr-l10n-fr) are also available.

The Wikipedia article explains some of the terminology.

How to get the Iceweasel branding on Firefox

The Mozilla add-on “Iceweasel Branding” applies the Debian Iceweasel branding to Firefox.

Currently (as of 2016-04-11) there is no Debian package to install that add-on.

Plugin

The plugin directory is

  •  /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

while Debian-based xul-ext plugins can be found at

  •  /usr/lib/mozilla/extensions

for more info on Iceweasel plugins, refer to the plugins section of the Mozilla page.

User-Agent string

Iceweasel's User-Agent strings are currently:

  • DebianWheezy

    • Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20140429 Firefox/24.0 Iceweasel/24.5.0

Some websites will serve different content depending on this string, or prevent access. You can change the User-Agent string manually (about:config, general.useragent.override preference) or via the User Agent Switcher plugin.

By default, general.useragent.compatMode.firefox is set to true, which includes "Firefox" in the User-Agent string.

Debian-Mozilla site

This is a resource where you can get the latest Iceweasel release which would eventually make it way into Debian's experimental, unstable and finally to testing and then stable. Usually the releases make their way to Debian unstable and then go downwards while the beta versions are released to experimental. Most of the aurora releases can be found at the mozilla.debian.net repo.

You can also connect with the Debian-mozilla maintainers via the mailing list as well as on IRC via #debian-mozilla on irc.oftc.net.

SSL / Secure Connection warning

The message

  •   Secure Connection Failed
      XXXX uses an invalid security certificate.
      The certificate is not trusted because it is self signed.
      The certificate is only valid for 00:16:b6:82:73:60
      (Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer)

Can be disabled. see : http://changetheworldwithyourpassion.blogspot.com/2008/07/turn-off-secure-connection-failed-in.html

Customizing the default profile

The files that are copied to ~/.mozilla/firefox/ when creating a new Iceweasel profile (when the browser is run the first time, or by using the -P command-line option) may be found in /etc/iceweasel/profile/. These files will populate the new profile with default settings, extensions and much more.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Troubleshooting

Iceweasel is consistently crashing on a website

  • First run Iceweasel without loading any extensions or plugins and see if the problem persists. This can be done by using the -safe-mode option

    MOZILLA_DISABLE_PLUGINS=1 iceweasel -safe-mode
  • If the problem goes away, then it means that one of the installed extensions is the root cause of the problem. If not then read on!
  • Create a new user and try to reproduce the problem on the new user's account.
  • If there is no problem with Iceweasel on new user's account, chances are that your ~/.mozilla/firefox/ directory is corrupt.
  • In order to see if the ~/.mozilla/firefox/ is infact corrupt or not, move it to some other directory and start Iceweasel again

    mv ~/.mozilla/firefox/ ~/old_firefox
    iceweasel &
  • If the problem goes away, well and good. Otherwise you can ask for help on debian-user mailing list by providing all the relevant information like "the way to reproduce the crash", "the version of Iceweasel you are using", and "the distribution you are using" etc., Finally, if you are confident that it is a bug in the Iceweasel package please consider filing a bug against the Iceweasel package.

Unsupported Browser Error

  • In order to browse websites like mlsni.net which allows Firefox but not Iceweasel, you'll need to change the user agent string of your browser. Look at the section "User Agent String" on how to change the user agent string.

No H.264 support in youtube

  • In order to watch 720p videos in youtube using HTML5, Gstreamer libav and Gstreamer plugins from the good set must be installed. To install execute the following command.

apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-good
  • Make sure about:config settings have media.peerconnection.video.h264_enabled set to true

  • After installing these codecs the HTML5 player must be requested on the youtube HTML5 website.

See also