Mozilla now provides Deb builds of Firefox Beta and Firefox Developer Edition for Debian-based Linux distributions (y’know, like Ubuntu)
Just like the Firefox Nightly Debs Mozilla announced back in October, Debian packages for Firefox beta and Developer Edition are available to install from a dedicated APT repository maintained by Mozilla developers directly.
Mozilla says these Deb packages offer better performance and security compared to Firefox builds available in distro repos or on other stores. This is due to custom compiler optimisations, hardened binaries with security flags enabled, and the fact Mozilla is able to get updates out to users faster.
So now that Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition are all available as official Debs on Ubuntu (and Debian) the question is: will an official Firefox Deb for the sable release be coming too?
Answer: unknown — but it’s arguably trending that way.
Right now, the best way to install a Firefox Deb on Ubuntu is using the Mozilla Team PPA. An official Firefox APT repo for stable builds would offer advantages over this: it’d natively support Debian, be in the full control of Mozilla, and allow them to integrate it with their CI pipeline.
On the flip side, no-one has said an APT repo for stable builds is planned, and because Mozilla already provide stable Firefox builds through binaries, Snap, and Flatpak, adding an additional “officially supported” method could increase the packaging burden.
But we’ll see, I guess!
For all the commands you need to run to set up this new APT repository and install Firefox beta/dev deb packages on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc, see this Mozilla hacks blog post.
