The Mozilla Blog - Mozilla’s new Firefox Linux for Debian derivatives

UNIX84@beehaw.org to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 90 points – 4 reasons to try Mozilla’s new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives | The Mozilla Blog
blog.mozilla.org

Mozilla now has an official Debian repository for running the latest Firefox releases.

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Why not sooner? And what about RPM based distros?

This is specifically to provide a native package that isn't a snap. RPMs are not the hell that is snaps.

I switched over immediately on my in work machine

Great to hear! Snaps are a really bad approach to universal packaging from canonical.

I hate snaps and flatpacks equally. They really cause more problems than they solve for new users.

It's also for Debian Stable/Testing users who only have ESR in their repos.

You can set up APT pinning and pull it from Sid, but I prefer not to fuck with official repos other than Backports. Even then, only if I really need to.

Fair point! I really wish there was a native Firefox build for Arm too.

I agree. There should have been an official Firefox repo from the beginning.

I do remember twenty years ago, Firefox development was incredibly Windows-centric. At one point it felt as though Firefox for Linux was a second class citizen. This was a radical departure from the Mozilla Suite which was maybe the first major desktop software to go from close to open source. For many years afterward, as a BSD/Linux user, I continued using SeaMonkey for that reason.

I assume having an official repo was just never a priority in the early days.