
My personal preference is to run a non-repository Firefox on my system. I’ll explain why and demonstrate how this is easily achieved in minutes.
I don’t quite like having to figure out and undo the changes Linux Mint has made to the browser — see this from Linux Mint. As they explain, this is nothing new — Firefox is open-source and can be fiddled with before shipping. I much prefer to do my own fiddling.
Contrary to popular belief, self-installing does not stop Firefox from auto-updating, provided you know how. The method I use will ensure it updates seamlessly. Let’s get stuck in and I’ll explain just how easy this is.
Download Firefox
Go to the Firefox download page and click download now. The latest version of
Firefox will begin downloading and will arrive as a tar.bz2
file.
A lot of Linux experts will tell you that manual installs (non-repository)
should always go into your /opt
directory. This is best-practice and not a
rule. I cannot be bothered to sudo every time I need to do something in there.
Also, because of how /opt
requires sudo permissions, housing Firefox in there
will prevent it from auto-updating. This means that for every new update,
Firefox will need to downloaded manually, extracted and moved to /opt
.
My solution is to create a folder in my /home/<user>
directory and store
Firefox in there. I use /home/<user>/Apps
but you can call it whatever you
want.
Move the tar.bz2
to your new folder and extract it there. You will end up
with just one folder named Firefox. Inside, an executable named Firefox
is
the one you want. It arrives with the correct permissions -rwxr-xr-x
so it
can be used immediately — just double-click it.
System integration
To fully integrate your Firefox into your desktop environment, complete with menu and desktop entries, follow the next steps.
-
Create a new, empty text document and call it
Firefox.desktop
. -
Add the following to it, updated with your own directory paths:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Firefox
Exec=/home/user/Apps/firefox/firefox
Comment=
Terminal=false
Icon=/home/user/Apps/firefox.png
Type=Application
- Sort out an icon and place it in your directory corresponding to
Icon=
as per the desktop file. You can use the one that comes in your theme or pick one of these if you prefer.
- Change permissions of
Firefox.desktop
.
$ chmod 644 Firefox.desktop
- Copy
Firefox.desktop
to~/.local/share/applications
and~/Desktop
.
$ sudo cp Firefox.desktop ~/.local/share/applications && cp Firefox.desktop ~/Desktop
You should now have a menu entry in your start menu. Linux Mint adds it to the group “Other” so do your thing and edit the menu to place it where you want, e.g. in the group “Internet”.
Et voila! You are an advanced user…according to me and according to Mozilla.