Firefox: not ESR

19 April – 25 May 2026

Complete

When you install a Linux distribution complete with a Desktop Environment, like Gnome, Mate, KDE, Cinnamon etc., that usually automatically includes quite a number of user applications, such as Libreoffice, a PDF viewer, a file manager, a text editor, an e-mail client, and a web browser like Firefox. But when you install only a bare Debian, with Fluxbox as the minimal ‘desktop environment’ (which doesn’t have a desktop), you need to do that all yourself.

ESR version

Strangely, Firefox is not in the Debian repositories. Firefox ESR is. ESR means Extended Support Release. It is advertised as follows:

“Firefox delivers secure, resilient, and privacy-focused browsing at scale. With enterprise policies in both Firefox or Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR), organizations get flexibility, control, and transparency in a trusted, open-source browser.”

Warnings and refusals

However, in my experience this is not a good solution. My online banking website warned me that I was using an outdated browser, and I’d better upgrade. I did let me in though. The ESR was version 140 then, the current version of Firefox was 148.

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube refused to play certain videos, also because of that too old browser. I suspect there is no real technical reason for this, because in some cases they were really old videos like this one (Székely verbunk - Suki András és zenekara), which I had often played in the past with much older browsers.

It’s just that some videos seem to have a rule that they want the newest browser version, or the latest but.

Installation of a recent Firefox

So how to install a recent Firefox in Debian? (Or in other Linux distributions, probably no different there.) There are several ways, but this what I find easiest:

Download a current Firefox from the official site. The file will usually land in the directory ~/Downloads, with a filename such as firefox-149.0.tar.xz .
Assuming there aren’t any older such files there, you can unpack it with the command
tar xf firefox-*.tar.xz
The result will be a subdirectory firefox, which contains everything needed.
Directory /opt will probably pre-exist. If not, you’ll need to create it:
sudo mkdir /opt
Now move that directory firefox that we obtained two steps ago, to that place:
sudo mv firefox /opt
Make sure that firefox is reachable from the command line path:
ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox
Make firefox the default browser for the system:
- /usr/bin/x-www-browser should be a symbolic link to
  /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser
- Note that to create a symbolic link, the names should be reversed, e.g:.:
  sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/firefox /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser
  And if there is already a symlink there, first remove it using
  sudo rm yourlinkname.
- /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser should point to /usr/local/bin/firefox

And you’re done!

Automatic update

A Firefox installation of this type will periodically check if it is still the current version, and will automatically update itself when necessary. This is different from the usual Debian/Ubuntu way to keep software up-to-date, but also useful and comfortable.