In light of firefox becoming a snap, i have a tutorial on how to replace the snap version with the version from mozilla's website.
Snap firefox is fine. But if you are the person who hates the constant slow startup times, and inabillity to install mozilla extensions, you're not alone.
Note: This involves getting through a little bit of terminal, but we'll just be copying and pasting commands here. This also works with any Ubuntu flavour.
Precaution: I advice to remove the firefox snap before doing this. Only remove snapd if you don't want it anymore.
in a terminal, type in sudo snap remove firefox. Type in your password, then wait until the snap is removed.
Now, we can proceed to installing the tar version of firefox!
Download the tar from the website.
Open a terminal and paste this command: cd ~/Downloads
Then extract the contents using this command: tar xjf firefox-*.tar.bz2
Apply this command: sudo mv firefox /opt.
You will be asked to enter your password.
Apply this command to make sure firefox is executable: sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox
And last but not least apply this command: sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mozilla/sumo-kb/main/install-firefox-linux/firefox.desktop -P /usr/local/share/applications
The flatpak version of Firefox themes worse than the snap package. Like for instance, my system is primarily dark mode, but i can still see white shades on the Firefox flatpak
I decided to try out the official Mozilla method to see if it works.
Question: Is it true you have to re download the tar at every upgrade? At least that's what I've heard from the link you posted. If Firefox doesn't update properly, I'll change the guide again as i want to avoid confusion.
@devemux86 I'm just posting it in case a person needs a current guide. If this way doesn't work out for me or other people, I'll just use the ubuntuzilla ppa.
Also, I'm not a fan of ESR, but if that works, I'll add it to the guide.
Note that the reason why i said that you should only remove snapd if you don't need it, is because apps like mate welcome and software boutique are snaps and people may depend on them.
Superb topic - thanks to all the folks for the great info shared here !!
Being forced into using snaps is just nasty IMO & as such I avoid things which come that way and also prefer to avoid flatpaks via flatpak not even being installed.
Snap was a different story though, as it got installed automatically as part of updating.
I barely use FF - but did take a look inside /var/lib/snapd/snaps & no FF exists there.
Moving forward, I can tolerate the few things shown, but wish to have my system actively resist conversions of any more of its normal apps to snaps - is there any method for doing that ??
If your apps you depend on have a deb version, you can download it from the website.
If you want to get rid of snaps completely, beware: Mate Welcome and Software Boutique will be removed.
In a terminal, type in sudo apt remove snapd.
After snapd is removed, type in sudo apt-mark hold snapd.
Then snap is never coming back to your system.
Whenever other apps need to launch a browser, they likely invoke x-www-browser or gnome-www-browser. If other apps aren't invoking Firefox, you may need to manually set its priority.
Open a Terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T), then copy-and-paste the following command-line to check the x-www-browser setting:
sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
If Firefox isn't on the list of installed browsers, add it with the following Terminal command:
The tar.gz version is the best as it updates automatically and will be guaranteed to be maintained.
FYI reading on IRC the mozilla team who maintain the PPA that has jammy builds for both firefox and firefox-ESR have made it clear that the PPA is not a guaranteed permanent thing. Originally said by @fossfreedom on Ubuntu Budgie Discourse.
Works here, just upgraded to 100 using .tar version.
Clicked on menu, Help, About Firefox and it checked for updates. Showed checking for updates and changed to update to 100. Clicked on it and it downloaded small file and changed to restart to update Firefox. Restarted and now have 100.
Just unsure of automatically, just pushed button and it did automatically upgrade using check for updates vs did not try automatically install updates in settings. Prefer to choose when.
Here to note that the tar works as good as the native deb version did.
If you are on 21.10, note that the firefox snap is already installed if you update.
Quick note on small glitch
UM22.04 Firefox tar on 101.0
Working great has updated well. Just today for some reason About Help and check for updates was just sitting and spinning.
Found in MATE System monitor Firefox was showing 1 zombie process in Firefox. Just killed Firefox without reboot, restarted
Firefox and check now completes.
An easier way...Get rid of Firefox altogether and install Librewolf!!! Librewolf has no telemetry and is already set up for safer browsing...no need to fiddle with Firefox settings!!!