Are you having trouble installing or updating Firefox? Why don't you use the binary version?

Firefox It is the browser that is installed by default in Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions. In general, there are usually no problems when installing or updating the browser, but I have read several times users say that it cannot be updated, for example, in Linux Mint. In distributions where everything is going as it should, such as Ubuntu and its official flavors, Mozilla delivers the new version of Firefox to Canonical and, shortly after, the company that runs Mark Shuttleworth uploads it to the official repositories, but it can be good idea forget about the repositories.

It seems like, many (or some) Linux users do not know that there is a option available on the Mozilla website which will avoid any problem with repositories. It is the binary version of Firefox, something like a portable version of the browser that works perfectly and is updated from the same program, just as the versions for Windows and macOS are updated. Below we will explain everything you need to know to use this lesser known version that could solve all your problems.

Firefox in binaries could be the solution you are looking for

Before continuing, we have to explain a bit what happens with the updates. If we open the browser that is installed by default in X-buntu and go to Help / About Firefox, we will see that the name of the program, the version and, below, "Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu - canonical 1.0" appear. That text basically means that we are using Firefox and Canonical's official update channel for stable releases; the Canonical's official channel to distribute software is via repository.

Now: if we download the version that they offer us on their website, as well as the Beta or Nightly, in the same section it appears "You are using the beta / nightly channel to update" and, as soon as we access the section, we will see what it looks for if there are new versions, it downloads them and asks us for a restart to apply them. This also appears in the version that we download from the official website, with the difference that it does not mention any channel, simply because we are using the channel to update the stable version. As we have mentioned above, the method to update is from the browser.

Install the Firefox version of the website

Having explained the above, the steps to follow to enjoy a Firefox always updated without depending on the repositories would be the following:

1. 1. We uninstalled the version of Firefox that gives us problems. If we do not have it installed, we go to the next step.
   2. Let's go to the official website and we download the version of the browser that it offers us. It will download a file that at the time of writing is firefox-68.0.2.tar.bz2.
   3. Unzip the file downloaded in step 2. Just double-click on it to open the compatible program to unzip .tar.bz2 files.
   4. Now we have two options:
      • La official option To install Firefox from its binaries is the following:
        1. If this is the first time that we have installed a Mozilla Build, we close any Firefox instance that we have open. If we have previously uninstalled it, this will not be necessary.
        2. We open a terminal and move to the folder where all the binaries are (for example: cd / home / pablinux / Downloads).
        3. We execute the command "firefox -ProfileManager" without the quotes.
        4. We create a profile called "mozilla-build" without the quotes.
        5. We make sure that "default" is still selected.
        6. We click on "Exit" to close the profile manager, but we have not started Firefox yet.
        7. We execute the following script, which will make the command in our bin directory execute the Firefox that we have installed.

mkdir ~ / bin
cat> ~ / bin / firefox <
#! / Bin / bash

exec "\ $ HOME / firefox / firefox" -P mozilla-build "\ $ @"
END
chmod 755 ~ / bin / firefox

• • • The other option is to use the binaries without installing them. To do this we can simply double click on the file «firefox» that is inside the unzipped folder in step 3.

Use it as a "Portable" version

If the installation fails or you want use binaries As you have downloaded them, some tips to start it faster and safer are to hide the downloaded folder and create a .desktop file to add it to the applications menu and / or dock. Hiding a folder is as simple as renaming it by adding a period in front of it. To create the .desktop file, simply create a text file that contains the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec = / path / to / firefox / firefox
GenericName [es_ES] = Firefox
GenericName = Firefox web browser
Icon = / path / to / icon / firefox.png
Name = Firefox
Terminal = false
Type = Application

From the above, the most important thing is that in "Exec" and in "Icon" we put the correct path to our Firefox and the icon that we have configured; You can find as many as you want by doing an internet search (it is recommended to look for png files). After create the .desktop file, you have to right-click on it, give it permissions to run as a program and put it in /home/your-user/.local/share/applications, which will appear in the applications menu.

With either of the two previous options we will have an official Firefox that will be updated from the same browser without going through any repository, so (it is assumed) we will avoid problems such as those experienced in Linux Mint. Has the explanation in this article helped you?