Pale Moon is a free, open source web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. It is available for GNU/Linux and Windows platforms.
The new version of the web browser «Pale Moon 32.2» has already been released and In this new release, a large number of fixes have been implemented, as well as a few changes, among other things.
For those who are unfamiliar with the browser, they should know that this is a fork of the firefox codebase to provide better performance, preserve the classic interface, minimize memory consumption, and provide additional customization options.
The project adheres to the classic organization of the interface, without changing to the Australis interface integrated in Firefox 29, and with the provision of extensive customization possibilities.
Pale Moon 32.2 Main New Features
The new version of Pale Moon 32.2 features experimental builds provided for FreeBSD using GTK2 (in addition to builds previously offered with GTK3). FreeBSD builds are compressed using the xz format instead of bzip2.
Another of the changes that stands out in the new version is the Goanna browser engine (a fork of the Mozilla Gecko engine) and the UXP platform (Unified XUL Platform, a fork of Firefox components) have been updated to version 6.2, which improves compatibility with other browsers and works with most of the sites where users have reported problems
In addition, we can also find that the support for FFmpeg 6.0, especially important for the latest generation Linux distributions, as well as the implementation of the caching scaled fonts in GTK, improving performance and fixed a build issue when compiling for Linux on ARM64 in later distributions.
We can also find that implemented a fix for websites using window.event (considered now obsolete). This is disabled by default, but can be enabled via the dom.window.event.enabled about:config preference.
Moreover, page cache was improved in the memory allocator, as well as dynamic module imports were implemented along with asynchronous function exports in implemented JavaScript class fields and modules.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- Implemented logical assignment operators ||= and .&&=??=
- Fixed various crashes related to WebComponents
- Fixed various build-from-source issues on secondary target platforms.
- Fixed various small browser front-end scripting issues that could lead to errors or broken functionality.
- Fixed handling of asynchronous (arrow) functions declared inside constructors.
- Fixed several small JavaScript compliance issues.
- Fixed an issue where JavaScript (in modules only) would not correctly create asynchronous wrappers.
- Updated the DOM Performance API to the current specification (User Timing L3).
- Updated keypress event handling to send keypress events with Ctrl+Enter.
- JavaScript internals have been updated to facilitate future portability, as well as to improve JavaScript performance.
- Updated window handling and styling on Mac.
- Updated Freetype lib to 2.13.0.
- Updated Harfbuzz library to 7.1.0.
- Updated the Fetch API to use the global base URL instead of the input document base URL to comply with the spec.
- Fixed a potential DoS issue with JPEG decoding.
- Fixed a potential issue in the Windows widget code that could cause crashes.
- Security issues addressed: CVE-2023-32209, CVE-2023-32214, and several others that do not have a CVE designation.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it about this new version, you can check the details In the following link.
How to install Pale Moon web browser on Ubuntu and derivatives?
For those who are interested in being able to install this web browser on their distro, they will only have to open a terminal in your system and type any of the following commands.
The browser has repositories for every version of Ubuntu that is still in current support. And in this new version of the browser, there is already support for Ubuntu 23.04. They just have to add the repository and install by typing the following commands:
echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/stevenpusser:/palemoon-GTK3/xUbuntu_23.04/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:stevenpusser:palemoon-GTK3.list curl -fsSL https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:stevenpusser:palemoon-GTK3/xUbuntu_23.04/Release.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home_stevenpusser_palemoon-GTK3.gpg > /dev/null sudo apt update sudo apt install palemoon
Now for users who are on the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS version execute the following:
echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/stevenpusser:/palemoon-GTK3/xUbuntu_22.04/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:stevenpusser:palemoon-GTK3.list curl -fsSL https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:stevenpusser:palemoon-GTK3/xUbuntu_22.04/Release.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home_stevenpusser_palemoon-GTK3.gpg > /dev/null sudo apt update sudo apt install palemoon
For whoever they are Ubuntu 20.04 LTS users they will run the following commands in the terminal:
echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/stevenpusser:/palemoon-GTK3/xUbuntu_20.04/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:stevenpusser:palemoon-GTK3.list curl -fsSL https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:stevenpusser:palemoon-GTK3/xUbuntu_20.04/Release.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home_stevenpusser_palemoon-GTK3.gpg > /dev/null sudo apt update sudo apt install palemoon