Good. Now, stop being forced as a snap, please.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-deb-apt-ubuntu-22-04
Unfortunately this is the best you can do with Ubuntu based systems
You could always use a distro made by sane people.
Bro, I’ve been using Kubuntu for 4 years, it’s the most I have spend with a single distro, but I’m this close to jump to Debian 12 (in fact I just tried it with VirtualBox today), I’m just waiting for the weekend because job.
I have also used Ubuntu when they sent out those free CDs. And for work when they had the Unity desktop (12.04 LTS). It was a good distro once.
I am pretty happy with the Arch (btw) I installed as a VM on Ubuntu 12.04 and then used as my main OS on the new work PC since 2017.The memories. My first LiveCD was 10.04. Distro-jumped for some years, then left Linux altogether for some more, and returned and stayed with it.
Yea do it. It boggles my mind why anyone would use Ubuntu at this point. Makes more sense to use Mint, even.
As a user of Windows my entire life, I’ve tried Ubuntu and Manjaro before and went back to Windows. I randomly felt like trying Linux again recently and set up Debian 12, and am finally not going back.
Your words are encouraging.
Kind of crazy that Ubuntu has some packages exclusively as snaps…
I hate it.
Crazy is installing a package through apt and having it install the snap.
Holy shit, didn’t know that
This… If I wanted an app in snap form, I would install it through snap instead. But installing an app through apt redirects to snap? No. It’s ridiculous and unacceptable.
It makes sense that they don’t want to maintain 2 versions. What doesn’t make sense is that when you ask it for an apt, instead of saying “this package isn’t avalible as an apt” and maybe “by the way it is available as a snap if you want”, it just installs the snap without telling you.
Canonical is not maintaining fuck-all. They’re just re-distributing Debian packages (sometimes with a few patches on top at most). The Debian team is doing all the heavy lifting of packaging software (including
firefox-esr).It’s not a technical limitation that Canonical doesn’t offer firefox as a deb. It’s an intentional attempt to trap people into their walled garden.
I didn’t say it was a technical limitation, I said it was laziness. Even if they just straight up take the deb from Debian, they are still responsible for if it works well on Ubuntu.
Anyway, it’s hardly a very good trap. You can still download the deb from Debian, or use Mozilla’s ppa, or use flatpak. Or hell, snap is the main difference between Ubuntu and Debian at this point anyway, so just use any other Debian distro. I hate to be the person defending Canonical here as I vastly prefer community distros, but when the vast majority of people are using OSs from Microsoft, Apple and Google, painting Canonical as a big greedy villain sounds like a joke.
anyone care to explain what we’re looking at here?
As a Firefox Desktop/Android user this sure sounds awesome.
The purple line is chrome’s speed scorem the blue line is firefox’s
Never complained about its performance but that’s awesome!
There was a time, around 2010 or so, that chrome was the clear winner with better launch times and a better UI. I switched away from FF in that time, but came back after the quantum update. There’s still a couple things I don’t like though. FF only recently started supporting date-pickers. It still doesn’t support-month pickers. I’ve come across a handful of pages that don’t work in FF at all (live metrics on Azure is one).
Not a deal breaker though. And these issues would go away with more market share, I’m sure.
Fennec from fdroid, for android, is even better as it didnt originate from google play store. My understandong is Google Playstore injects data into the app package. I use fennec for my day to day access. It syncs with desktop Firefox so all my passwords and logins are there.
There is also Firefox Nightly for “developers”. I use it for the custom add on packages and doom scrolling.
Google playstore does not inject data in app packaging because it doesn’t own the signature key. F-Droid, however, does. I mean, they own the signature, but they do not inject or modify apps. They could, though.
do you know of any app developers that publish their signature, so one can compare it with the one in Google Play?
I would love for my banks to do this, for example…
Some developers will publish their apps on github, you can download it, and use a different app to get the apk file from the app you get from the play store, and compare the hash of the file. If they’re identical then Google didn’t meddle with it. If they’re not, either Google did, or the developer releases a different version to Google Play.
i had left firefox for a while due to the google ecosystem but i’m happy i came back to it.
Same. I have switched between the two several times, but I started on Firefox for a long time before switching, and now I’ve been back on Firefox for at least 5 years. There was definitely a good stretch of chrome in the early 2010s though.
Firefox is well clear by now. I’m also using the Android version, and I think it’s great.
Firefox on Android using Ublock Origin is as good as it can get.
Factos
Most Google web apps (Maps, Earth, Gmail, etc) work in Firefox.
I’m still using Chrome, but it keeps getting shittier. At some point they’ll push me over to Firefox. Hope Firefox can avoid getting shitty.
While Mozilla is far from perfect, I think they’ve managed to avoid getting shitty for almost 20 years.
That’s because the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit. They don’t need to maximize value for their shareholders™.
Thank you Netscape for setting Navigator free!
The Enshitification cycle is a feature of for profit corporations, Google was always going to turn evil at some point.
The Mozilla Corporation is for profit, but they reinvest all of their profits. They are also wholly owned by the Foundation. You can’t donate to Firefox.
That’s what non-profit means. You reinvest the profit back into the project rather than pocket the money. It doesn’t literally mean “no profit”.
Cool. They also have rules about how you make money and where that money goes. The Mozilla Corporation is not a non-profit. It is a commercial company created to make profit to support development.
So, a non-profit that skirts the rules, basically. Good to know.
It is a non-profit.
The Mozilla Corporation was established on August 3, 2005, to handle the revenue-related operations of the Mozilla Foundation. As a non-profit, the Mozilla Foundation is limited in terms of the types and amounts of revenue it can have. The Mozilla Corporation, as a taxable organization (essentially, a commercial operation), does not have to comply with such strict rules. Upon its creation, the Mozilla Corporation took over several areas from the Mozilla Foundation, including coordination and integration of the development of Firefox and Thunderbird (by the global free software community) and the management of relationships with businesses.
Did you read that? Because it says it isn’t.
The Foundation is a non-profit. The Corporation is not. The Corporation is taxable. It can generate revenue in ways a non-profit cannot.
Yes, and they’ve made some profit-driven decisions, such as pocket integration, but never on the level of what google does.
That’s why I’ve said they are far from perfect (but the best we have).
And dropping Thunderbird :(
Although it seems to be doing well now under its own, newish commercial corporation.
It’s coming along nicely. I donate and am a fan.
Somehow it’s always the lead software in a category that becomes shitty while everything else is praised. Regardless of what’s being talked about. (I know why)
People get used to it, it’s “fine” but doesn’t improve considerably or add anything exciting, so people get bored. I moved from Firefox to Chrome, and honestly Chrome feels smoother and uses less ram seemingly for me on my laptop. Aside from no support for vaapi on wayland, chrome is fine imo
How about today? I believe in you. You can do it! Break the cycle. Ditch the Chrome.
I live by, “never do anything you don’t have to.” But seriously I have some things customized in Chrome I’d have to adapt to Firefox. It would take a little effort on my part and I just don’t want to deal with it until I have to. I’m sure it will happen sooner than later. I think the deprecation of Manifest V2 is going to force it because my browser is essentially a uBO support system. Until then I’ll keep slogging along.
my friend actually convinced me to switch just a few days ago lol. i’m just super thankful that i could transfer all my bookmarks and stuff
Once you finish setting up and are happy, if you care about privacy and don’t mind a little more upfront work, set up Multi account tabs. It “sandboxes” your logins and cookies to categories you choose. I have a category for each social media site, one for my finances, one for amazon, one for other shopping, etc.
Have you tried Brave? Idk the full story, but it is basically chrome with more privacy stuff and is way faster than normal chrome. Feels just like using chrome but faster.
Brave has recently had some controversy around selling user data for AI training and isn’t really a great suggestion for privacy due to this.
I’ve been avoiding Chrome as devil avoids holy water for years. So I’m glad FF does well.
Firefox rules
Chrome drools
Damn that’s huge improvements in a relatively short span of time. I’m just waiting for more features on Firefox Android.
Be aware that Firefox Android supports addons. So maybe there is already a fix…
Yes and they’re awesome, but there’s some QoL features in looking for. Like being able to enter reader mode from custom tabs, and set reader mode color scheme to match system theme, and more colors. Also dynamic color (Material You" support would be sweet.
Seriously, I learned Firefox supports addons on mobile and suddenly the Internet became useable again on my old smartphone. Ads made browsing for me borderline impossible.
Yeah. After years I had to make an urgent booking via chrome browser in an airport on my mobile. The website didn’t work with firefox. when using chrome, I always add unlock origin and similar add blockers before I actually browse - and I was surprised, that Google Chrome on android doesn’t even allow any extensions at all!
Blokada
@swnt @Extrahammer, Vivaldi Android has an inbuild ad and trackerblocker, same as in Desktop, apart an own feature to play YouTube Videos, because of this you don’t need the YT app in Android.
But how would that solve the “works only on chrome” issue? It’s certainly very bad website design to make the website only work with chrome and not other Browsers. And neither Firefox nor Vivaldi are blink engine based (which is what chromium, edge, safari etc. use). I’d have the same problem with Vivaldi as with Firefox. When this problem isn’t there, I prefer to stick with firefox.
@swnt, Vivaldi is Chromium based (Blink). Never had any problems with Vivaldi in any page, but I know that some pages us the discriminating Browsersniffings, which should be illegal, but even with this I never had a problem, because Vivaldi appears by in their UA as Chrome, ever since Vivaldi removed their branding from the UA a few years ago because of these criminal practices of some pages.
Now in the Desktop browser you can even use BingChat, because Vivaldi automaticly switch its UA to EDGEAh, cool. Thanks!
What features are you missing?
For me, I l’d like to go into reader mode from custom tabs, for reader mode to sync with system color, and more colors on reader mode.
Also Material You/Dynamic Color for the UI would be awesome.
Improved PWA support would be nice, definitely lagging behind Chrome in terms of PWA implementation right now. Fission doesn’t exist on Android yet, only desktop.
Have your collections be synced to your profile, which definitely seems like a design oversight right now.
Also better extension support since right now to add the non supported list it’s a very complicated and convoluted process to do so that feels hacked in.
Regardless, I’m still very happy with the state of the Android browser and it by far beats out the other browsers imo. Stuff like uBlock Origin, much better reader mode then Chrome, and first party bottom toolbar puts it miles above the alternatives for me. Also because Firefox is awesome. I use a fork called Fennec which is just Firefox Stable without telemetry/analytics/proprietary blobs removed, and is available on f-droid.
For me, proper PWA support.
How is it not properly supported at the moment? Genuinely curious, I don’t use PWAs a lot but when I have it has worked fine with Firefox.
Not sure, but Wiki has a bunch of footnotes that may explain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app#Browser_support
Edit: it’s just this article, which seems like too much fluff to bother reading https://www.fastcompany.com/90597411/mozilla-firefox-no-ssb-pwa-support
The experience is not as smooth, it just looks snappier in Chrome. Also some features (like wake locks) are not supported.
This is not so much related to “proper” PWA support, but you can’t install PWAs as desktop apps from Firefox, whereas you can from Chrome/Edge. It’s the only reason I use Edge, just to locally install PWAs.
I use this addon to get “installable” PWAs and it works great for me. I use three installed PWAs regularly and have several more installed.
Can anyone verify that this is also true for platforms beyond windows (what is plotted in the link by default)?
(I tried to change the plot to show macOS and Linux, but the plotting site is dubiously functional on mobile, plus there are a bewildering number of plot options with long, confusing names).
https://mozilla.social/@stevetex/110719022092047831
Here are the Linux results. macOS looks a bit different as well.
Awesome. What’s the difference between the three plots here?
Different tests on macOS. See the link for Linux
Congrats to Firefox, it really has made substantial improvements over the years.
I’ll stick to Safari. I don’t trust Mozilla any more than Google or Microsoft.
Isn’t Safari made by Apple? It’s not like Apple is some paragon of corporate virtue, why do you trust them?
Because with Apple I’m the paying customer, not the product being sold.
You’re always both. With Apple, it doesn’t sell your data, but it does sell curated ad space where they use your data to power their tools. While this is less of an invasion of privacy than Google or the atrocity of Meta’s privacy policy, it still exists on a spectrum of how much companies are willing to use your data for extra profit. I’m not saying to not use Apple, hell I’m currently using Microsoft Edge, but I think it’s important to understand that literally every profit-driven company is subject to the same systemic flaws and none of them can be completely trusted.
If you’re running Safari, you’re already running their OS. If Apple wants to spy on you, they’ve already got the means to do so, so you’ve already decided to trust them.
Switching to Chrome or Firefox means trusting one more entity in addition to Apple. This expands your possible exposure.
Ah yes, an open source popular browser that is made by a nonprofit organization is less trustworthy than a close source browser made by a public company
An open source organization with a track record of dubious user-hostile behavior.
Apple does not add plugins to my browser without my consent, nor do they show ads in my browser.
Now all we need is that it provides a better experience than Chrome.
It already does. I dislike using Chrome. Firefox works better, looks better, and containers are really useful to me.
Meh, I’ll be honest and say that I’m not impressed by chrome in modern day. While I hate Microsoft, edge is a nicer browser to use than chrome, and that’s saying something
I agree, but I think that the normies like to use Chrome because… that’s what everyone is using, so I am eager to see how FF can give a better experience to the normal user.
Normies (also me) use Gmail, it’s easy when you login to your browser and you’re partially already authenticated everywhere else.
Same goes for android.
it’s easy when you login to your browser and you’re
partially already authenticatedautomatically sending your personal, private information everywhere else.FTFY
You’re correct, but the majority of normies don’t care. A lot of people don’t naturally feel a strong impulse towards privacy, so the fact that Google knows everything about them doesn’t really bother them.
Firefox a few years ago would kill my Mac battery in a couple hours, now it’s as good as safari for energy management. No reason not to use it as a daily driver now.
Maybe it’ll start maintaining Mozilla again. You know: its namesake project.
deleted by creator
Yep, I use it every day.
That doesn’t change the fact that Mozilla gave up on its flagship.
There is a project called Mozilla? Afaik it is the company name? What is it?
Mozilla is the name of the Open Source version of Netscape Navigator. It is the pre-cursor to Firefox.
Not only that, they had goals beyond just a browser. They wanted to create a whole OS ecosystem integrated with the browser. They released Firefox as a side project to just get a browser in everyone’s hands while they worked on Mozilla. Turns out the OS ecosystem in a browser was a bust, and Firefox was a winner. Just the Mozilla devs haven’t stopped being bitter about it. The old Netscape motivations around the project have been a boat anchor.
There was the Firefox mobile OS but apparently that didn’t pan out too well it seems. I remember vaguely hearing about it long ago, but not by much.
I remember that! Pretty sure I tried it out on my Nexus 5. It was cool but even then it seemed an impossible hill to climb. Looks like it was forked into a feature phone OS that’s maintained to this day!
I mean didn’t they achieve that? Today a lot of things are web based. Firefox is a powerful browser. Especially on Android. So if you want you can have your OS in a browser thingy…
Not at all. They created a great browser, which is what us end users wanted, but they never achieved their ecosystem goals.
Mozilla Suite, the thing discontinued seventeen years ago!?
So I tested both FireFox
and Edge 
real quick and it’s true.Although, I enabled every security and privacy setting on both (just about the same set of extentions also). But even then, even with a lower score, Edge still feels much smoother to use. Also, every time test refreshed, FF flashed white for a split second as opposed to Edge’s black. Since I use dark mode and Dark Reader, it’s extremely annoying on FF’s part.
Chromium-based browsers still trounces Firefox on the Jetstream benchmark. I mean, I realize the Speedometer benchmark is supposed to test real-world scenarios, while Jetstream is more synthetic, but whatever work mozilla did to improve performance I’d expect to scale in other benchmarks too, so I’d expect Firefox to at least be bit closer to Chromium, even if losing a little.
Mozzila re-writing parts of the browser in the rust programming language has made a decent improvement to the performance. For those who aren’t to into programming rust is has a strict compiler, meaning better code quality (Less Bugs) and offers more optimization methods then other programming languages.
I use firefox and I like it but they have been dumbfying their UI and nagging users to use pockets.
Why on earth would I need to go to about window to update? Also, I don’t know where to find extensions so I just choose addons then manually go to extensions.
Would love a more customizable UX for Firefox and the option of a more compressed UI. Aesthetically it definitely needs a rethink.
Going to the about window to check for updates is a decades old thing among thousands of different software(it’s the same in Edge, Chrome, Opera(old and new), etc)
Clicking on the “Add-ons and Themes” literally takes you straight to the extension tab(extensions are add-ons).
First of all, I know other browsers keep update in about page, however, this is why I don’t use them. It wasn’t used to be in a burger menu tho.
Second, add-ons and theme isn’t saying exactly “extensions”. Also, it would take you to the last tab which is by default plug-ins. try it.
I like Firefox and I’d support the developers but they should stick to their roots to keep their current user base.
Second, add-ons and theme isn’t saying exactly “extensions”. Also, it would take you to the last tab which is by default plug-ins. try it.
You can click the Extensions toolbar icon that was added by default for everyone a bit ago, and at the bottom of the list of your extensions it has a “Manage Extensions” option (it is actually pinned to the bottom of the visible menu, so even if you have enough extensions that it “overflows” into a scroll menu, the Manage Extensions button is always visible). That page lets you remove / configure any currently installed extensions, and has a search bar for the Extensions store as well.
Yup, the new FF UI is unbearable. And it was the last straw (among other things) that convinced me that it was time to switch to something else (after 20 years).
Yeah i can’t stand it either, stayed on the old UI for 18 months or so until sites started breaking. I’m using this mod to make it work like the old UI and it’s exactly the same, plus you only need to setup once updates haven’t broken it for me so far. https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
Thanks, I already knew about the “unfuck” fix made by Black. Too late for me, anyway. I have realized that Mozilla doesn’t care about feedbak or users’ opinion (or the users at all…), so I don’t feel like supporting them anymore.
By the way, the fix is fine. But it is a matter of principle: people shouldn’t have to waste their time unfucking Mozilla’s fuckups and users shouldn’t have to waste their time trying to make a browser usable. So, congrats, Moz Corp, you’ve managed to lose an hardcore user.
May I ask what are you using now?
Brave. I was between it and Vivaldi. Finally settled on Brave.
Hm, where do they nag? I don’t know what Pockets is and haven’t seen anything about it.
I also never manually update Firefox, I just restart when it tells me it’s downloaded an update.Every other update would show an ad to use it. Also, you cannot remove it afaik.
Also, you cannot remove it afaik.
Remove it where? If its the toolbar, you can just remove it from the
Customize Toolbarmenu. If it is the home/new tab page, you can remove it by clicking the settings gear at the top right of that page and disable the option (or from the main brwoser settings area). If you use Firefox Account syncing (or just sync your Firefox profile folder via other means) then that option persists across different devices accordingly too. This page explains how to disable any Pocket integration, including the ones that I’ve mentioned here, along with even the “Save to Pocket” menu entry that comes up when right clicking a link.You can remove it
You can with about:config flags, you can also set the API url to some random shit so it can’t even ping Mozilla.
Agreed, this is the main reason I switched to Librewolf over official Firefox. Firefox has devolved into adware.
adware
That’s a gigantic stretch
What is exactly being measured here? Someone care to elaborate what kind of things they kept into account?
It’s this benchmark: https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/
TodoMVC is a popular UI example use-case, which illustrates basic interactivity concepts. Webdevs will often implement TodoMVC when learning a new framework to get the hang of all the core concepts.
And well, there’s a lot of frameworks, which may all have different performance in different browsers, so this benchmark tests many different implementations of TodoMVC, all done in different frameworks.
Ultimately, it tries to simulate normal web usage, it’s not some speciality benchmark.
Exactly. Also, one might prefer 75, 80% of Chrome’s speed, but also 75% of the battery usage and maybe only 90% for RAM.
I for one would definitely not be against less battery usage on laptop/mobile
I would still use FF for moral reasons but I’d understand if uses it for the things you mention, but saying it’s “faster” isn’t really a good term in this case, faster in what? I mean, I’m not saying this is done in bad faith or anything, but would be even better if we could know that instead of simply clamoring over “fastness”.
I just love reading post like this, congrats Firefox and f*** Google!
