Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Pale Moon is an open-source, cross-platform browser based on Mozilla Firefox, being up to 25% faster then the original.
Also worth mentioning, due to the fact that Pale Moon is not affiliated to Mozilla, it will not adopt the Australis interface, keeping an UI inspired by the classical Firefox interface. Also, the support for DRM will not be added by default, the users having the possibility to enable it, via third party plugins.
The latest version available for Linux is Pale Moon 25.3.0, which has been released a while ago, coming with the below changes:
- Overhauled WebGL. It now properly supports depth textures, shadow mapping and glow shaders.
Note that older operating systems or older/embedded video processors may be limited in their support of these features. - Updated the ANGLE library to a much more current version.
- Removed the crash reporter code completely to improve overall browser responsiveness and operation.
Please note that a necessary victim of this has been the in-browser (devtools) SPS profiler because of its reliance on crash reporter data-gathering tools. - Removed the Mozilla Plugin Finder Service (no longer in use @Mozilla).
- Android: removed the Mozilla “product announcements” service.
- Re-added control of the number of concurrent tabs to be restored from a session with browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs (accepted values 1-10)
- Significantly improved performance and accuracy of date/time/timer handling.
- Significantly improved performance of the creation of DOM elements with plain text content.
- Added several significant performance optimizations for arrays and strings in javascript.
- Added several code performance optimizations and bugfixes in SVG, the presentation shell, SCTP, style gradients and CSS parsing routines. (Thanks, Axiomatic!)
- Added an “Open link in current tab” context menu entry on links for UI consistency.
- Updated styling of the browser with personas (lightweight themes) once more to improve display in tabs-on-top mode, improve overall legibility of tab text, and display of inverted close buttons on some controls on dark personas.
- Added a special case check for the Flash plugin version check on Linux failing due to commas instead of periods in the version string.
- Added Windows 10 compatibility in executable manifests.
- Android: Fixed a crash on GL canvas surfaces.
- Fixed incorrect Sync “howto” instruction links from the Sync dialogs.
- Fixed the color of selected tabs in Linux when personas (lightweight themes) are in use that do not match the overall tone of the OS system theme.
- Fixed a bug where a variable in parentheses would abort Javascript parsing.
- Fixed a bug where the address bar would incorrectly be cleared.
- Fixed padding issues for dropdown lists.
- Fixed DNS lookups so proper record types are requested for IPv4 and IPv6.
In this article I will show you how to install Pale Moon 25.3.0 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS, LXLE, Deepin, Linux Lite, Peppermint, Debian, Kwheezy, SparkyLinux, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva and Arch Linux, Manjaro.
Because Pale Moon 25.3.0 is not available via any repository yet, we have to download Pale Moon from the project’s site, extract the archive, move to /opt and alias the launcher.
Follow the instructions for your system’s architecture exactly, in order to get a successful installation.
How to install Pale Moon 25.3.0 on 32 Linux systems:
$ wget sourceforge.net/projects/pm4linux/files/25.3.0/palemoon-25.3.0.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf palemoon-25.3.0.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/palemoon*
$ sudo mv palemoon /opt/palemoon
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/palemoon/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon
Next, to start the Pale Moon browser, type palemoon in your terminal.
How to install Pale Moon 25.3.0 on 64 bit Linux systems:
$ wget sourceforge.net/projects/pm4linux/files/25.3.0/palemoon-25.3.0.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf palemoon-25.3.0.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/palemoon*
$ sudo mv palemoon /opt/palemoon
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/palemoon/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon
Next, to start the Pale Moon browser, type palemoon in your terminal.