How To Install Firefox on Debian and Other Distro's

[f33dm3bits]

If we're going to have a web-browser discussion might as well move it to a new topic, since this web-browser vs that web-browser is kind of polluting this topic now? Also my bad as I was part of it.

If you all want to continue the web-browser x vs web-browser y discussion I can move the off-topic ones to a new topic. If you don't I'll just clean our off-topic replies up. Just let me know?

 

[osprey]

I'll get castigated for sayin' this, I know I will, but.....

Personally, I never understand the need for all this complex work in the terminal where Firefox is concerned. We always just grab the latest tarball from here:-

Directory Listing: /pub/firefox/releases/

.....unpack it into /opt (as a rule), then simply launch it from inside the self-contained directory. All the config stuff will be automatically created in the correct places.....and you can always drag the binary onto the desktop & dress it up with an icon if you want a launcher.

Manual checking for updates never hurt anyone. Who here is really that bothered about trying to shave off a few seconds everywhere they can?

​

Mike.

No castigation from here. Who could possibly not be impressed, informed and entertained by the massive puppy support and advocacy from the @MikeWalsh desk?

The manual approach of "grab the tarball", "unpack" and "launch" for an app is almost as old as UNIX itself, and was the tried and true method in the early days of linux before package managers became fully integrated. Puppy is following in the deeply furrowed footsteps of UNIX using that method which can still be used today by other linux distros but which has largely been supplanted by the numerous package managers that have been developed like: apt, rpm, aptitude, synaptic, apk, pacman, zypper, portage, nix etc.

@Alexzee, did outline the manual method briefly amongst the many that he covered in greater detail.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@osprey :-

Yeah; we've done so much stuff the old-fashioned, manual way for as long as we have because until very recently, Puppy never really had a properly-functional package-management system.

For years we had the PPM (Puppy Package Manager), written & developed by one of the "old" developer crew - mavrothal - who, like so many others, never moved from the old Murga Forum to the current Puppy Forum and basically went MIA.

Mavrothal did a brilliant job with the rather limited tools he had to hand at that time, yet although the PPM had access to each new Puppy's 'parent' archives, the dependency-checking left a lot to be desired & stuff frequently needed chasing up and hunting down manually just to get things working. This in turn was exacerbated by the fact that the parent archives were designed for a standard mainstream distro.....whereas our Pup has always had just enough differences to throw a spanner in the works most of the time!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

In the last 2-3 years, the community has whole-heartedly embraced the one thing I came to Puppy to get away from; Synaptic, which I've hated with a passion ever since I came to Linux over a decade ago. Don't ask me why, but I never was able to get my head around the way it worked.....and as I get older, it just confuses me more.

I don't blame the community for getting all excited over Synaptic. They've finally got the one thing they never had before.....

I think I got too used to the way Windows did things, and although I don't need convincing of the many & varied benefits of Linux I still liked the Windows PortableApp eco-system so much that we spent a LOT of time developing a Puppy equivalent to it. Due to Puppy's somewhat 'odd' way of doing things, I remain convinced that it fits her like a glove....

But then, I'm biased, because I think it's the best thing to happen to our Pup since sliced bread was invented. That's just me.

(shrug...)


Mike.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Morning from DownUnder.

On

If we're going to have a web-browser discussion...

I agree with Maarten.

I think we should wait for the OP to express a preference, and Alex, don't hesitate to give us your thoughts - you have more than established your credentials at this site, many times over

Maarten, if you move the surplus to a new thread, the site software will attribute ownership to the Poster where you start the move from, eg if #3, yourself, if #4, Osprey and so on.

On

If you don't I'll just clean our off-topic replies up

My thought would be to preserve them, I regard all input as valid in its own right, but just extraneous to this thread.

Whatever Alex chooses, I can do, or you can tackle, lol.

And my #2 could have been DM'ed, instead (guilty as charged).

HTH

Chris

 

[Alexzee]

Alex, just a heads up. $DESKTOP_SESSION should be echo $DESKTOP_SESSION

Other than that, good read.

Chris

Thanks Chris.
On my way not to correct the command for the DE.

 

[Alexzee]

Cool article! But not sure what the idea behind the article is because every distribution has Firefox in the repos, unless it's about how to also install Firefox-based distributions that aren't in the repos?

Having a handful of ways to install and config what the user fancies is a plus. And, in time it sharpens the users skills to learn how to do things on a Linux system that may be brand new coming from Windows or Mac.
A lot of Windows users may not know about FF. Or know about Waterfox an alternative.

The motivation behind this f33dm3bits is that this is my way of giving back to the Linux Community.

 

[Alexzee]

@Alexzee
Btw. the script you attributed to me may at some point become obsolete in regard to adding apt sources because of modernized sources.

If you want you can insert modernized version as follows:

# Update APT sources (modernized apt format)
echo 'Types: deb
URIs: https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/
Suites: mozilla
Components: main
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc' |
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.sources > /dev/null

Done, thanks!

 

[Alexzee]

I'll get castigated for sayin' this, I know I will, but.....

Personally, I never understand the need for all this complex work in the terminal where Firefox is concerned. We always just grab the latest tarball from here:-

Directory Listing: /pub/firefox/releases/

.....unpack it into /opt (as a rule), then simply launch it from inside the self-contained directory. All the config stuff will be automatically created in the correct places.....and you can always drag the binary onto the desktop & dress it up with an icon if you want a launcher.

Manual checking for updates never hurt anyone. Who here is really that bothered about trying to shave off a few seconds everywhere they can?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Still, I've got to be honest here. We're so used to doing stuff like this manually in Puppy, by literally diving into the file-system and physically moving/copying/creating/deleting/changing permissions, etc, to suit ourselves, that we often forget that mainstream distros are NOT so 'forgiving' of such cavalier behaviour....many of which insist on stuff being done in a certain, specific order, and in a particular way, in order to keep the package-management system "happy".

I have a whole bunch of 'example' desktop entries that just need modifying slightly, a directory with several hundred icons, and scripts that automatically create & 'register' Menu entries with the system. It's honestly quicker for me to do stuff the way I do it in Puppy than it is to do it all thru the terminal instead. And it's at times like this that I'm once again reminded of how truly unique our Pup really is.....combining the best aspects of multiple different methods & systems, and everything being aimed at making life easier for the user (who takes priority), while at the same time being very secure DESPITE running as 'root'.

It doesn't sound possible, does it? Especially given that our community are essentially a bunch of 'tinkerers'...

(shrug...)

Anyhoo; nice one, @Alexzee . Very informative, mate.


Mike.

Thanks!

And I totally can appreciate what your saying in regard to things done manually.
I do this sort of thing in Slackware all the time.

 

[Alexzee]

Like our member @CaffeineAddict shared. I can appreciate his use for ESR.

However, I fancy all the bells, whistles and functionality with the highest version of FF.
In many of my cases the latest and most current have been the greatest.

The work is done and it was my pleasure to write the article for new and well versed Linux users. It's my hope that users will benefit from the instructions should they need it.

Thank you all for your support and input!

Alex

 

[wizardfromoz]

@f33dm3bits , the OP has not indicated for either of moving or deleting the additional input from Members, and said input does not adversely impact, nor confuse the material at Alex's blog, so I would leave this thread as it is, unless the OP signals otherwise.

Wiz

 

[f33dm3bits]

@f33dm3bits , the OP has not indicated for either of moving or deleting the additional input from Members,

I just thought it was my duty to mention it as I personally thought some replies including mine had started to pollute the original topic. So just wanted to make sure before I did anything more.

 

[GatorsFan]

Install Firefox .deb package for Debian-based distributions

To install the .deb package through the APT repository, do the following:

Create a directory to store APT repository keys if it doesn't exist:

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings

Import the Mozilla APT repository signing key:

wget -q https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -O- | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc > /dev/null

If you do not have wget installed, you can install it with: sudo apt-get install wget

Next, add the Mozilla APT repository to your sources list:

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc] https://packages.mozilla.org/apt mozilla main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list > /dev/null

Configure APT to prioritize packages from the Mozilla repository: you can just simply copy and paste the next few lines

echo '
Package: *
Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org
Pin-Priority: 1000
' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla

Update your package list and install the Firefox .deb package:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install firefox

For those of you who would like to use Firefox in a different language than American English, Mozilla has created .deb packages containing the Firefox language packs. To install a specific language pack, replace fr - (French) in the example below with the desired language code:

sudo apt install firefox-l10n-fr

To list all the available language packs, you can use this command after adding the Mozilla APT repository and running

sudo apt update

apt-cache search firefox-l10n