Good day,
I had occasion to check my Firefox Browser today after a helpful note popped up telling me that it has been a while since I started my browser and asking would I like to refresh it.
I did not take up the option of refresh but did take a moment check what version was running.
I was startled to find out that it was the long term release version - as delineated in the subject line of this post.
Is that because the Ubuntu that Neon is based upon is itself a long term release?
Would I be correct in believing I would not destabilise my neon install if I decided to ditch The Mozilla ESR and install the latest Firefox from Discover or even running a current version from an untarred Desktop folder from Mozilla Firefox's own repositories? Example: firefox-87.0.tar.bz2

I suppose it is a question of trust as in even running from a folder might not Firefox -87.0 find some way to overwrite /my /home.mozilla folder?

Best wishes.

Neon comes with the version of Firefox that is from Ubuntu 20.04, namely the current version - which is version 87.
Heck the current ESR version is 78.

Ubuntu does not even offer an ESR version of this, other than via a Snap package, which the user would have had to explicitly install themselves, and Neon has the current FF pre-installed. If you installed the Snap for Firefox-ESR (or via flatpak, or appimage, or standalone tar file) , you probably still have the current FF installed, as Snaps and similar are self-contained and do not remove or replace your existing .deb version. But normally, if you used the snap or flatpak version, you should have seen updates to more current version in Discover. So this is an odd situation

There should not be any problem installing or using the current Firefox in terms of your ~/.mozilla config directory, but it would not hurt to copy it as a backup just to be sure.

scrawfuela wrote:Is that because the Ubuntu that Neon is based upon is itself a long term release?

I never saw Firefox ESR installed on any of my Neon installations (6 of them) - they always got the latest plain Firefox installed. Not sure how you even got the ESR installed (I don't see that version in the default repositories, nor do I see it available from Discover).

scrawfuela wrote:Would I be correct in believing I would not destabilize my neon install if I decided to ditch The Mozilla ESR and install the latest Firefox from Discover or even running a current version from an untarred Desktop folder from Mozilla Firefox's own repositories? Example: firefox-87.0.tar.bz2

I suppose it is a question of trust as in even running from a folder might not Firefox -87.0 find some way to overwrite /my /home.mozilla folder?

I would think that Firefox-87 would use the same .mozilla folder in your home directory (i.e. overwriting it), but it may very likely create a different profile. Look in the ~/.mozilla/firefox directory, you will see a mwad0hks.default (the 'mwad0hks' part could be any random set of letters and numbers). The 'profiles.ini' text file will contain which profile is used by Firefox. I doubt you will destabilize anything, though if Firefox-87 would use the same profile, it may 'update' it to version 87, which could cause a problem if you tried to go back to Firefox ESR-70.4.1.

If you want to preserve the current profile, backup (copy) the mwad0hks.default first (something like to mwad0hks.default-save). Copying within the .mozilla/firefox directory is fine (and probably recommended). If you did want to use this old profile with Firefox-87 and never go back to Firefox ESR, and it didn't use it be default (i.e. Firefox-87 created a new profile), you can edit the profiles.ini file to refer to the old profile, or you could copy the contents of the old profile into the new profile (delete the old contents first, and make sure Firefox is not running). I used these techniques when I first switched from Windows (XP at the time) to Linux Mint 10 many years ago, and have been carrying that same profile through several versions of Mint, then to Neon when Mint stopped producing a KDE version.

claydoh wrote:Neon comes with the version of Firefox that is from Ubuntu 20.04, namely the current version - which is version 87.
Heck the current ESR version is 78.

Ubuntu does not even offer an ESR version of this, other than via a Snap package, which the user would have had to explicitly install themselves, and Neon has the current FF pre-installed. If you installed the Snap for Firefox-ESR (or via flatpak, or appimage, or standalone tar file) , you probably still have the current FF installed, as Snaps and similar are self-contained and do not remove or replace your existing .deb version. But normally, if you used the snap or flatpak version, you should have seen updates to more current version in Discover. So this is an odd situation

There should not be any problem installing or using the current Firefox in terms of your ~/.mozilla config directory, but it would not hurt to copy it as a backup just to be sure.

Thanks for the response. Yes it is an odd situation. I would never knowingly install an ESR version. For the time being I will remain puzzled.

Thanks once again.

thunder422 wrote:

scrawfuela wrote:Is that because the Ubuntu that Neon is based upon is itself a long term release?

I never saw Firefox ESR installed on any of my Neon installations (6 of them) - they always got the latest plain Firefox installed. Not sure how you even got the ESR installed (I don't see that version in the default repositories, nor do I see it available from Discover).

scrawfuela wrote:Would I be correct in believing I would not destabilize my neon install if I decided to ditch The Mozilla ESR and install the latest Firefox from Discover or even running a current version from an untarred Desktop folder from Mozilla Firefox's own repositories? Example: firefox-87.0.tar.bz2

I suppose it is a question of trust as in even running from a folder might not Firefox -87.0 find some way to overwrite /my /home.mozilla folder?

I would think that Firefox-87 would use the same .mozilla folder in your home directory (i.e. overwriting it), but it may very likely create a different profile. Look in the ~/.mozilla/firefox directory, you will see a mwad0hks.default (the 'mwad0hks' part could be any random set of letters and numbers). The 'profiles.ini' text file will contain which profile is used by Firefox. I doubt you will destabilize anything, though if Firefox-87 would use the same profile, it may 'update' it to version 87, which could cause a problem if you tried to go back to Firefox ESR-70.4.1.

If you want to preserve the current profile, backup (copy) the mwad0hks.default first (something like to mwad0hks.default-save). Copying within the .mozilla/firefox directory is fine (and probably recommended). If you did want to use this old profile with Firefox-87 and never go back to Firefox ESR, and it didn't use it be default (i.e. Firefox-87 created a new profile), you can edit the profiles.ini file to refer to the old profile, or you could copy the contents of the old profile into the new profile (delete the old contents first, and make sure Firefox is not running). I used these techniques when I first switched from Windows (XP at the time) to Linux Mint 10 many years ago, and have been carrying that same profile through several versions of Mint, then to Neon when Mint stopped producing a KDE version.

Thank you for your post response.
I currently have no notion how an ESR managed to get on my install.
I have tried to visualise a situation where I would actively seek out such a version and none appears in my mind.
Sole user of this PC.
I'll get it sorted.
Cheers

scrawfuela wrote:

claydoh wrote:Neon comes with the version of Firefox that is from Ubuntu 20.04, namely the current version - which is version 87.
Heck the current ESR version is 78.

Ubuntu does not even offer an ESR version of this, other than via a Snap package, which the user would have had to explicitly install themselves, and Neon has the current FF pre-installed. If you installed the Snap for Firefox-ESR (or via flatpak, or appimage, or standalone tar file) , you probably still have the current FF installed, as Snaps and similar are self-contained and do not remove or replace your existing .deb version. But normally, if you used the snap or flatpak version, you should have seen updates to more current version in Discover. So this is an odd situation

There should not be any problem installing or using the current Firefox in terms of your ~/.mozilla config directory, but it would not hurt to copy it as a backup just to be sure.

Thanks for the response. Yes it is an odd situation. I would never knowingly install an ESR version. For the time being I will remain puzzled.

Thanks once again.

I don't know what you have there. There was no 70.4.1.

The latest ESR is version 78, the previous was 68 and the next will be 91.

Firefox Release Notes

Release Calendar

@WaltS48
I don't know what you have there.
There was no 70.4.1.
You are correct on both counts.

My post title is wrong - it should read 78.4.1esr (64-bit)

I've discovered what went wrong for me and am now closing the post.
It is too personal to share