this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Mozilla now has an official Debian repository for running the latest Firefox releases.

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[–] ThermoToaster@exng.meme 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why not sooner? And what about RPM based distros?

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 26 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This is specifically to provide a native package that isn't a snap. RPMs are not the hell that is snaps.

I switched over immediately on my in work machine

[–] ThermoToaster@exng.meme 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Great to hear! Snaps are a really bad approach to universal packaging from canonical.

[–] BurnedDonut@ani.social 4 points 9 months ago

I hate snaps and flatpacks equally. They really cause more problems than they solve for new users.

[–] comicallycluttered@beehaw.org 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's also for Debian Stable/Testing users who only have ESR in their repos.

You can set up APT pinning and pull it from Sid, but I prefer not to fuck with official repos other than Backports. Even then, only if I really need to.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

Fair point! I really wish there was a native Firefox build for Arm too.

[–] UNIX84@beehaw.org 2 points 9 months ago

I agree. There should have been an official Firefox repo from the beginning.

I do remember twenty years ago, Firefox development was incredibly Windows-centric. At one point it felt as though Firefox for Linux was a second class citizen. This was a radical departure from the Mozilla Suite which was maybe the first major desktop software to go from close to open source. For many years afterward, as a BSD/Linux user, I continued using SeaMonkey for that reason.

I assume having an official repo was just never a priority in the early days.

[–] Eryn6844@beehaw.org 1 points 9 months ago

i hate snaps and if any distro trys to push that on me i getting uninstalled asap