I believe, Firefox bugfix releases get rolled out pretty quickly on most non-rolling distros, too, so I don’t think it’s a terribly different experience, unless you’re on a distro with Firefox ESR, like e.g. Debian.
Can you expand on this a little for a new guy who is considering a switch from Mint to Debian?
In my understanding Firefox ESR is like a stable, longstanding version that doesn’t get frequent little updates but still gets occasional large updates. (Like 1.0, 1.1, etc. rather than 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc.)
Is there a measurable difference in the user experience and or security of ESR?
But basically, Firefox ESR (“Extended Support Release”) means that you still get security fixes in a timely manner, but feature updates are delayed. Firefox normally gets feature updates every 4 weeks, whereas ESR averages one (larger) feature update per year. You might know such a model as LTS (“Long-Term Support”) release from other software.
Essentially, the current ‘normal’ Firefox version is 141.0, whereas the ESR version is 128.13.0.
Mozilla does maintain a separate changelog for ESR, but basically it’s as if from 129.0 onwards, you only included the “Fixed”, none of the “New” or “Changed” stuff.
The next ESR will be based off of Firefox 140, as can be seen in their release calendar, so this change that OP praises here will not make it into ESR for another year or so.
And then you gotta also pay the Debian toll, which is that they won’t upgrade to the newest ESR right away either. 😅
Mozilla actually still maintains the Firefox ESR based on version 115, which is about to be discontinued with the new ESR major release.
Debian will typically maintain the ESR even beyond that (Firefox is open-source, so they can retrofit patches themselves), because they have an even longer support lifecycle for their OS release. But I believe, if you always upgrade to the newest Debian release as they make them available, you should be covered by the Mozilla-supported ESR at all times.
If you do not want to pay the Debian toll (not just for Firefox, but any software where you care about new features), then Flatpaks are typically the solution of choice. It’s a different way of installing software, which allows you to get the newest version, independent from what Debian is doing.
But back to the normal Debian experience. How does it affect the user experience for Firefox? Well, we’ve already covered that others may be happy about new features when you’ve gotta take solace in your disgustingly stable software.
These feature updates also include the newest support for web standards, so it’s theoretically possible that a webpage doesn’t work right in ESR. In practice, I don’t think this happens very often, because webdevs can’t use the newest web standards right away anyways. There’s always gonna be users on old browsers or there’s whole browsers which don’t support the new stuff right away.
How does it affect security? Generally, ESR is secure. Occasionally, the feature updates might introduce security-relevant stuff, too, like when they switched to the multi-process architecture, that brought along much better isolation and you can’t just retrofit that into ESR. But yeah, this isn’t the norm. You shouldn’t be particularly worried about security. You do get the normal patches in a timely manner.
Well, and to infodump a little more, you could also take a look at Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s Linux Mint, but instead of Ubuntu underneath, it’s Debian underneath.
Ubuntu is actually itself based on Debian, so I’ve heard LMDE described as “What does basing it on Ubuntu even add? LMDE feels exactly the same as normal Linux Mint.”.
Of course, if you’re switching because you want to try something different, that would be counterproductive. 🫠
Thanks so much for the informative and detailed reply. That pretty much answers every question.
Thanks also for the tip about LMDE. I actually really like Mint, I’m only switching because it’s the only distro I’ve tried and I feel like I should shop around a bit. Going to Debian because while starting my journey I want to shop around with things that work, rather than having to learn how to tinker all at once just to get things running. But if I decide I need Mint back I’ll probably check out LMDE for the hell of it.
You may also just add the LMDE repo (Faye is Bookworm, Gigi is Trixie) or the official Mozilla one and install the standard, non ESR version of Firefox from that one.
I don’t know how the timing of each release is planned but the Firefox website gives instructions for using the repositories for esr, beta, nightly, or dev edition.
Using Debian as your distro doesn’t lock you into firefox ESR.
I installed a DE on my server, I just disable sddm unless I need to do something in a web browser on that machine. I haven’t needed to yet, but I have it just in case.
Very true. I used to poweroff my laptop every day, but now, after getting into servers, I sometimes leave my laptop up overnight (even though the laptop isn’t the server)
I’ve got a super ignorant question; Is the situation with session saving on Linux desktop environments with default settings finally locked in enough that you literally can’t tell when a reboot has happened once the session is restored? Including user space apps? _Redacted_OS has been so good at this for so long that I literally don’t think about uptime on my daily driver anymore.
I’m on KDE and I’m not doing anything special regarding this, and for me the answer to this question “somewhat”. I specifically hate when apps are starting by themselves so they don’t do for me and I’m happy about it. But when I turn on most apps that I use they open in the state I closed them in.
no, at least not if you’re doing anything with poorly supported hardware with it’s own configuration tools that reset when it loses power (it is powered when the computer is on but sometimes stays powered through reboots)
Because on my Linux machines, once it’s been updated, I can not open a new tab, it’ll tell me to frig off and restart. I can click links in existing tabs, and might’ve been possible to enter a new URL in an existing tab, I don’t recall exactly.
an application’s files can be updated while the application is running, and
there’s an OS-wide updater (i.e. package manager) with which you can update most software, including Firefox. (You can also get Firefox with its built-in auto-updater, but most people prefer the OS-wide updater.)
Both of these are good things. But Firefox, with its relatively advanced multi-process architecture, had a problem here, because it could happen that its files got updated while it was running and then when it started a new process, this new process might be incompatible with the old processes, therefore unable to communicate correctly.
Their initial solution was to force you to quit Firefox and reopen it, when they detected that the files had changed and you did something in Firefox which might need a new process, so primarily when opening a new tab.
I’m guessing, they now implemented a way to launch the new process by still using the old files from before the update.
that forced restart is probably going to be a huge win for our rolling release brothers and sisters.
I believe, Firefox bugfix releases get rolled out pretty quickly on most non-rolling distros, too, so I don’t think it’s a terribly different experience, unless you’re on a distro with Firefox ESR, like e.g. Debian.
Can you expand on this a little for a new guy who is considering a switch from Mint to Debian?
In my understanding Firefox ESR is like a stable, longstanding version that doesn’t get frequent little updates but still gets occasional large updates. (Like 1.0, 1.1, etc. rather than 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc.)
Is there a measurable difference in the user experience and or security of ESR?
And is Debian actually restricted to ESR?
Sure. Here’s a high-level page which I’ll be kind of going off of: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update-channel
But basically, Firefox ESR (“Extended Support Release”) means that you still get security fixes in a timely manner, but feature updates are delayed. Firefox normally gets feature updates every 4 weeks, whereas ESR averages one (larger) feature update per year. You might know such a model as LTS (“Long-Term Support”) release from other software.
Essentially, the current ‘normal’ Firefox version is 141.0, whereas the ESR version is 128.13.0.
Mozilla does maintain a separate changelog for ESR, but basically it’s as if from 129.0 onwards, you only included the “Fixed”, none of the “New” or “Changed” stuff.
The next ESR will be based off of Firefox 140, as can be seen in their release calendar, so this change that OP praises here will not make it into ESR for another year or so.
And then you gotta also pay the Debian toll, which is that they won’t upgrade to the newest ESR right away either. 😅
Mozilla actually still maintains the Firefox ESR based on version 115, which is about to be discontinued with the new ESR major release.
Debian will typically maintain the ESR even beyond that (Firefox is open-source, so they can retrofit patches themselves), because they have an even longer support lifecycle for their OS release. But I believe, if you always upgrade to the newest Debian release as they make them available, you should be covered by the Mozilla-supported ESR at all times.
If you do not want to pay the Debian toll (not just for Firefox, but any software where you care about new features), then Flatpaks are typically the solution of choice. It’s a different way of installing software, which allows you to get the newest version, independent from what Debian is doing.
But back to the normal Debian experience. How does it affect the user experience for Firefox? Well, we’ve already covered that others may be happy about new features when you’ve gotta take solace in your disgustingly stable software.
These feature updates also include the newest support for web standards, so it’s theoretically possible that a webpage doesn’t work right in ESR. In practice, I don’t think this happens very often, because webdevs can’t use the newest web standards right away anyways. There’s always gonna be users on old browsers or there’s whole browsers which don’t support the new stuff right away.
How does it affect security? Generally, ESR is secure. Occasionally, the feature updates might introduce security-relevant stuff, too, like when they switched to the multi-process architecture, that brought along much better isolation and you can’t just retrofit that into ESR. But yeah, this isn’t the norm. You shouldn’t be particularly worried about security. You do get the normal patches in a timely manner.
Well, and to infodump a little more, you could also take a look at Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s Linux Mint, but instead of Ubuntu underneath, it’s Debian underneath.
Ubuntu is actually itself based on Debian, so I’ve heard LMDE described as “What does basing it on Ubuntu even add? LMDE feels exactly the same as normal Linux Mint.”.
Of course, if you’re switching because you want to try something different, that would be counterproductive. 🫠
Thanks so much for the informative and detailed reply. That pretty much answers every question.
Thanks also for the tip about LMDE. I actually really like Mint, I’m only switching because it’s the only distro I’ve tried and I feel like I should shop around a bit. Going to Debian because while starting my journey I want to shop around with things that work, rather than having to learn how to tinker all at once just to get things running. But if I decide I need Mint back I’ll probably check out LMDE for the hell of it.
You may also just add the LMDE repo (Faye is Bookworm, Gigi is Trixie) or the official Mozilla one and install the standard, non ESR version of Firefox from that one.
I don’t know how the timing of each release is planned but the Firefox website gives instructions for using the repositories for esr, beta, nightly, or dev edition.
Using Debian as your distro doesn’t lock you into firefox ESR.
Why? I already reboot daily because everything gets updated so much. (I’m into that)
When you get into servers, uptime becomes your drug
Firefox on a server?
I think some servers have an actual DE and all. If I remember correctly, I’ve seen centos with gnome.
I installed a DE on my server, I just disable sddm unless I need to do something in a web browser on that machine. I haven’t needed to yet, but I have it just in case.
It really shouldn’t though. Reboot your servers
I run Ubuntu Server on my server, but on my computer I want updates as soon as humanly possible.
Very true. I used to poweroff my laptop every day, but now, after getting into servers, I sometimes leave my laptop up overnight (even though the laptop isn’t the server)
Why waste energy and lifetime of a machine so it sits there and does nothing?
I’ve got a super ignorant question; Is the situation with session saving on Linux desktop environments with default settings finally locked in enough that you literally can’t tell when a reboot has happened once the session is restored? Including user space apps? _Redacted_OS has been so good at this for so long that I literally don’t think about uptime on my daily driver anymore.
I’m on KDE and I’m not doing anything special regarding this, and for me the answer to this question “somewhat”. I specifically hate when apps are starting by themselves so they don’t do for me and I’m happy about it. But when I turn on most apps that I use they open in the state I closed them in.
no, at least not if you’re doing anything with poorly supported hardware with it’s own configuration tools that reset when it loses power (it is powered when the computer is on but sometimes stays powered through reboots)
Why?
Does one reboot their entire system after updating Firefox on Linux?
I never do. I don’t even restart Firefox after updating, if it is already running.
Clearly you don’t use it often, firefox will force you to restart itself and refuse to render webpages.
I guess I am lucky that it does not refuse to work since it is my default browser across all my machines.
Linux machines?
Because on my Linux machines, once it’s been updated, I can not open a new tab, it’ll tell me to frig off and restart. I can click links in existing tabs, and might’ve been possible to enter a new URL in an existing tab, I don’t recall exactly.
Can you even update Firefox while it’s running if you’re on windows?
No idea lol
On Linux:
Both of these are good things. But Firefox, with its relatively advanced multi-process architecture, had a problem here, because it could happen that its files got updated while it was running and then when it started a new process, this new process might be incompatible with the old processes, therefore unable to communicate correctly.
Their initial solution was to force you to quit Firefox and reopen it, when they detected that the files had changed and you did something in Firefox which might need a new process, so primarily when opening a new tab.
I’m guessing, they now implemented a way to launch the new process by still using the old files from before the update.