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.
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: Remove firefox snap before attempting. Here’s how.
in a terminal, type in sudo snap remvoe firefox. Enter your password and snap firefox will be removed!
Now, we can proceed to installing 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
I have tried both installs. IMO, if you want the latest FF version then the .deb is the answer. If you just want FF installed and can wait for the enterprise version to be updated then the version from budgie-welcome probably is best.
The only problem with this method will be for updating firefox.
You will need to give rights to your user on the directory /opt/firefox if you want firefox tu auto update or to install firefox in the home folder but then it will only be accessible only for you
H’mm, will see if what i did will intefere with firefox updating as frenchy said.
As you guys said that esr is best, I decided not to choose it because I like being current.
I’ll check if firefox updates properly in a few days.
I’ll keep you posted.
In case you don’t depend on snap, here’s how to remove it completely.
Again: Warning! This will remove budgie welcome. If you depend on it or any other snaps, don’t use the below commands.
To remove snapd type in sudo apt remove snapd. Wait until snapd is removed.
Then to prevent it from coming back type in: sudo apt-mark hold snapd
First is inspired by how Linux Mint did ; second stops snap service through systemd ( which sounds « safer » since systemd is responsible for snap « starting » if I understand correctly ).
No native host messaging in confined app’s for the moment but it might get fixed soon ( can’t find the source I read about it though… )
Maybe :
In one or hundred words : these are known problems for years.
Both flatpak Firefox and flatpak chromium theme worse than the snap package. Also, Mozilla kinda asked to make Firefox a snap, so it isn’t entirely Canonical’s fault. I don’t know why people are throwing a fit all of a sudden and saying they’re moving to another distro or something like that. It just shows how intolerant us linux users are.
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.
So whilst there is various reports on social media about how to install firefox from that PPA it may not be a medium/long term solution.
We will have to watch-and-see what decisions the mozilla team make.
Another solution is installing the Firefox .deb packaged by Linux Mint, from their repository.
But it’s maybe too soon for doing so in 22.04 since actual Mint version is 20.04 based - don’t know how it affects .deb packaging and needed dependencies though…
Another solution would be to try out the snap version of Firefox for yourself first, instead of blindly following the mostly negative coverage on Snap. This weekend I installed the new Ubuntu LTS release including the Firefox snap on my quite old laptop from 2009, and I can’t say anything bad about the snap Firefox so far. The first cold start of Firefox after installing the OS took a reasonable 10 seconds for me, and every subsequent start after that was much faster. On newer computers, it should be able to start even faster. The snap version of Firefox otherwise runs extremely smoothly and stable; I even dare to say that the snap version works better than the conventional .deb version. But of course, that’s just my personal experience.
Yes, that’s just your experience, in a « light » context.
If you’re into a multi-users context where most people rely on some addons/extensions that need Native Host Messaging, you just can’t use Firefox as a snap…
…and many addons/extensions need it, it’s not new, it’s not a surprise and it’s not limited to snap, flatpak suffers the same.
This will get fixed eventually but pretending it’s ready for mass adoption is deceptive.
That’s true. I had to switch to the tar.gz firefox because of that. But if they fix the Native messaging protocol issue it, then i will use the snap again.
