As you may already know, Firefox is being developed on three separate channels. First, the features are implemented in the developer branch, they reach the beta channel when enough tests have been performed and finally, some of the new features from the betas get included in the stable version of Firefox.
Recently, Firefox 40.0 Beta 1 has been released, bringing improved scrolling, graphics and video playback performance for Linux. And Mozilla claims that this improvements are Linux specific.
Also, other changes have been implemented:
- New: Download protection from potentially unwanted software
- New: Suggested Tiles show sites that may be of interest, based on categories from your recent browsing history
- New: Add URLs to a Hello conversation for additional context
- New: New style for add-on manager based on the in-content preferences style
- New: Smoother and more reliable CSS animations via asynchronous animations
- Changed: Improved scrolling, graphics, and video playback performance with off main thread compositing (GNU/Linux)
- Changed: Add-on extensions that are not signed by Mozilla will display a warning
- HTML5: JPEG images use less memory when scaled and can be painted faster
- HTML5: Support for new Unicode 8.0 skin tone emoji
- HTML5: IndexedDB transactions are now non-durable by default
- Fixed: Kannada text does not display properly in built-in pdf viewer
For more information, see the official changelog for yourself.
Installation instructions:
Mozilla does not provide a repository for its Firefox browser, but the installation steps are quite easy anyway and should not create difficulties on any Linux distribution.
The latest versions of Firefox are available as pre-compiled libraries via the Mozilla FTP, so we need to download the archive (i386 or i686 for 32 bit systems and amd64 or x86_64 for 64 bit systems), extract it and run the firefox file. Also, it is advised to remove previous versions of Firefox, move Firefox to /opt and create a symlink, for an easier usage.
The below instructions should work on all the popular Linux systems, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite, Debian, Robolinux, SparkyLinux, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Arch Linux, Manjaro, ROSA Desktop etc.
How to install Firefox Beta on 32 bit Linux systems:
$ wget ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/40.0b1/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-40.0b1.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf firefox-40.0b1.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox*
$ sudo mv firefox /opt/firefox
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
To start Firefox, just open a terminal, type firefox and hit enter.
How to install Firefox Beta on 64 bit Linux systems:
$ wget ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/40.0b1/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-40.0b1.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf firefox-40.0b1.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox*
$ sudo mv firefox /opt/firefox
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
To start Firefox, just open a terminal, type firefox and hit enter.