How to install the real Firefox on Debian?

Question

Debian 6 ("Squeeze") uses a rebranded version of Firefox called Iceweasel. It, however, lacks plugin support, and most of my favorites don't work.

So what is best way to install the "real" Firefox on Debian?

Answer 1

First, you need to remove the existing Iceweasel package (I think you can use aptitude as well):

apt-get remove iceweasel

Then, download the latest Linux build of Firefox directly from Mozilla. Extract the files, and navigate to that folder, and run it. If you want, make an icon on your desktop, and you can also make a link to the binary in /usr/bin/firefox to make it easier to launch. If you have root access, you can also install Firefox in /usr/local so all users will be able to run it.

After this, double-check that automatic updates are enabled, and you should be up and running!

---

If you want a package-based one, you can use Linux Mint's Debian package repo (as noted in the comments below, be aware that this may cause conflicts with automatic updates and other Debian packages in some cases). To do this, add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian import

And add the GPG key for that repo. Then, just run:

apt-get update
apt-get install firefox

And you should be good to go!

The default install is German, to install in any other language, you can manually run:

apt-get install firefox-l10n-en-us 

(Edit[11/26/2014]: This package no longer appears in the linux mint repository.)
(Edit[11/26/2014]: apt-get install firefox-l10n-en-gb - This is the only working English package)

Packages names for other common langages include (official repository list - scroll half way down):

 firefox-l10n-en-gb       # British English
 firefox-l10n-es          # Spanish
 firefox-l10n-fr          # French
 firefox-l10n-de          # German

Answer 2

There's a sourcefourge project, basically dedicated to allowing you to get the latest version of Firefox when running Ubuntu, no matter which version you run (as long as dependencies are satisfied, obviously). Since Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, I thought I'd try it. I've got Firefox working on Debian Testing ("Wheezy") just fine.

Run this:

apt-get remove iceweasel
echo -e "\ndeb http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt all main" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null
apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com C1289A29
apt-get update
apt-get install firefox-mozilla-build

This resolves the GPG key issue that is encountered when using the imported Linux Mint DE repository, and is significantly simpler than the other viable solution. Also, this gives you access to Thunderbird and SeaMonkey as well.

Note that this solution only gives you the English-US Release Channel version (no beta or Aurora builds). Other languages can be used, but additional steps are required.

See the project page at Ubuntuzilla for more information.

Answer 3

This post on the Debian User forums suggests the following:

• Download latest Firefox from: http://www.mozilla.com . If using wget, remember to escape any & with \ so it doesn't break the url down into a series of background process
• Copy the downloaded file to /opt

• Extract it using:

  $ tar -jxvf firefox-x.x.xx.tar.bz2
  

• Change the permissions of the file:

  $ chown -R root:users /opt/firefox
  
  $ chmod 750 /opt/firefox
  

  Note that the user should be a group member of "users"

  $ usermod -a -G users username
  

• Create a symbolic link

  $ ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
  

• Delete firefox-x.x.xx.tar.bz2 from /opt

To install new versions, you are supposed to

# rm -rf /opt/firefox*
# rm /usr/bin/firefox

To make a desktop icon, do this

$ touch /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Edit this using your favourite text editor:

$ nano /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Contents of firefox.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Mozilla Firefox
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/usr/bin/firefox %U
Icon=/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png
StartupNotify=true
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;

You can remove iceweasel with

$ apt-get remove iceweasel

If you encounter this error:

./firefox: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

You should probably install

apt-get install ia32-libs ia32-libs-gtk

Chances are that you are trying to install the 32 bit version of firefox in a 64 bit Debian environment.

Answer 4

No need for this any more. Debian stable started shipping Firefox instead of iceweasel today.

Debian will ship the Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox, which is roughly updated every 9 months. If you always need the latest version the others answers may stil be an option for you.

For more infomarmation see the debian bug report

Answer 5

Iceweasel Aurora is very close to Firefox latest stable release.

I installed Iceweasel Aurora using this official debian/mozilla tutorial.

I was able to import my Firefox profile from another installation without errors, ie, all addons, bookmarks, history entries and user settings are working perfectly.

FYI, some of the plugins I use are Firebug, Awesome screenshot and Searchstatus, all worked fine and were not disabled by Iceweasel.

You may also want to use the Firefox logo for launchers.

This is probably a better option as it allows an easier update process.

Answer 6

For the Googlers... this works for Debian Jessie:

#Add GnuPG archive key for mozilla.debian.net repository to the list of trusted keys
wget -q -O - http://mozilla.debian.net/archive.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Depending on the version you want (pick one),

• Release version:

  cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla-firefox.list
  deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-release
  EOF
  

• Beta version:

  cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla-firefox.list
  deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-beta
  EOF
  

• Aurora version:

  cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla-firefox.list
  deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-aurora
  EOF
  

Then:

#Assign higher priority to recently added repository.    
cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla-firefox
Package: *
Pin: origin mozilla.debian.net
Pin-Priority: 501
EOF

apt-get update && apt-get install firefox

Source: https://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2016/03/21/how-to-use-recent-version-of-firefox-in-debian-jessie/

Answer 7

This method is working for me on Debian 9 Stretch (64bit):

cd ~/Downloads

/usr/bin/curl -L -o firefox-latest-linux64.tar.bz2 "https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest&os=linux64&lang=en-US" && sudo tar xvf firefox-latest-linux64.tar.bz2 -C /opt/ && rm firefox-latest-linux64.tar.bz2

sudo ln -sf /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

You can set something like this in your root's crontab for @daily or @weekly

The download link was derived from this Mozilla readme.txt: https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/latest/README.txt

Answer 8

First edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file to include:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian import

Update system repositories:

$ apt-get update

You may get and ignore a following error:

W: GPG error: http://packages.linuxmint.com debian Release:
The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public
key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 3EE67F3D0FF405B2

Once system's repositories are updated simply use apt-get command to install Firefox Browser on your Debian Jessie 8 Linux:

$ apt-get install firefox

Reading package lists... Done                                                                                                                                                                             
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
firefox
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 40.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 89.9 MB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
firefox
Install these packages without verification? [y/N] y

Once the installation is finished you can start Firefox either from command line:

$ firefox

Answer 9

Below is the most straight forward method I've found for replacing Iceweasel with Firefox in Debian.

Wiki >>> Ubuntuzilla: Mozilla Software Installer

The terminal commands are as follows:

:~$ sudo apt remove iceweasel

:~$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following entry to the source.list file:

deb https://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/ all main

Save and exit Nano.

:~$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com C1289A29

:~$ sudo apt update

:~$ sudo apt install firefox-mozilla-build

I hope this will be of help to anyone else wanting to replace Iceweasel with the current version of Firefox. As far as I have seen, the source is very well documented and maintained.

Answer 10

The following works for me:

$ sudo apt-get install firefox-esr

The -esr apparently means Extended Support Release.

Answer 11

I'm running an AMD Athlon II X2 system. Firefox runs perfectly on Wheezy i686 & the 3.2.0-4-686-pae kernel. The stock version of IceWeasel just seemed gutted, crippled and inferior compared to Firefox. Installation is a snap. I download the newest Firefox to /home/myusername/Linux/Software/Mozilla/current/, and then run

cd /opt
sudo rm -R firefox*
sudo cp /home/myusername/Linux/Software/Mozilla/current/firefox* /opt
sudo tar jxvf firefox*

The second line removes the previous version completely before the upgrade.