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 25.0.0, which has been released a few hours ago, coming with the below changes:
- Change of the browser’s GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) to properly differentiate from Firefox. The new GUID is {8de7fcbb-c55c-4fbe-bfc5-fc555c87dbc4}.
- Allow extensions with both Pale Moon GUID and Firefox GUID to be installed natively (dual-ID system).
- Pale Moon GUID blocks will have preference over Firefox (compatibility) blocks.
- Disconnect of Pale Moon’s “Firefox compatibility” version from Pale Moon’s application version to maintain Firefox 24.* extension compatibility regardless of Pale Moon version.
- Disable Firefox Compatibility mode by default.
- This means Pale Moon will no longer have a Firefox/xx.xx indicator in its UserAgent string.
- This may impact some websites that check browsers by UserAgent and possibly warn, complain or block you. You should contact the site’s owners and request support for Pale Moon. Pale Moon will allow you to override the UserAgent on a per-site basis if you absolutely must visit the site and they absolutely won’t cater to your freedom of browser choice.
- Use the alternative sync implementation on a new server. Current Pale Moon sync accounts cannot be ported over, so you will have to create a new account when updating to v25. The previous server implementation has already been shut down due to continued issues, and will be retired on the very short term to free up infrastructure and reduce expenses. The alternative sync implementation is Sync 1.1 compatible, like before.
- Stop building the WebApp runtime by default. The use of “Web Applications” started from the command-line is such a niche feature that it has no business being in Pale Moon’s main-line builds. If you need the WebApp runtime for your specific organization and want to use Pale Moon, you can build Pale Moon from source with the feature enabled.
- By default, do not sync add-ons. Syncing between different devices will likely not want you to sync the add-ons in use. There’s a reason you’re using different devices, after all.
Un-prefix CSS box-sizing. You can now use box-sizing:border-box, box-sizing:padding-box and box-sizing:content-box to switch box-sizing mode on elements using CSS. - Implement image-orientation in CSS. You can now use image-orientation: {angle} [flip] in CSS to rotate images in 90 degree steps and optionally flip them.
- Improve bookmark menu item-dragging.
Dragging bookmarks in the bookmarks menu is now more convenient (allow diagonal dragging, prevent tooltips from interfering, etc.). - Move the option to “use the classic downloads window” from status bar preferences to the main options window. This way, it’s easier for people to find and it’s in a much more logical place. The classic downloads window will not go away any time soon in Pale Moon.
- Update branding images for official/unofficial logo, and some about: pages.
- Add a new type of “blank new tab” page with logo-styling.
- This logo page will be the default setting (instead of about:blank).
- Add Opus audio to WebM.
- Add VP9 codec to WebM on both desktop and Android/ARM.
- Allow absolute-in-relative positioning in table and CSS table-cell elements.
- Allow the user to override the use of accessibility colors in the browser with browser.display.ignore_accessibility_theme
- Improve the display of tabs when lightweight themes (personas) are in use for both light and dark themes.
- Enable cache compression by default to more efficiently use disk cache.
- When shutting down the browser while you still have downloads in progress, Pale Moon will now by default warn you that the downloads will be cancelled.
For a full list of changes, see the release notes.
In this article I will show you how to install Pale Moon 25.0 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS, LXLE, Deepin, Linux Lite, Peppermint, Debian, Kwheezy, Crunchbang, SparkyLinux, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva and Arch Linux, Manjaro.
Because Pale Moon 27.1 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 25.0 on 32 Linux systems:
$ wget sourceforge.net/projects/pm4linux/files/25.0.0/palemoon-25.0.0.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf palemoon-25.0.0.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/palemoon*
$ sudo mv palemoon /opt/palemoon25.0.0
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/palemoon25.0.0/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon
Next, to start the Pale Moon browser, type palemoon in your terminal.
How to install Pale moon 25.0 on 64 bit Linux systems:
$ wget sourceforge.net/projects/pm4linux/files/25.0.0/palemoon-25.0.0.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf palemoon-25.0.0.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/palemoon*
$ sudo mv palemoon /opt/palemoon25.0.0
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/palemoon25.0/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon
Next, to start the Pale Moon browser, type palemoon in your terminal.
How to import your Firefox profile (bookmarks, history, extensions, etc) on Pale Moon:
There are a lot of extensions capable of doing this, but I prefer the good old fashioned way: copy the profile manual, from Firefox to Pale Moon:
$ cp -R ~/.mozilla/firefox/* ~/.moonchild\ productions/pale\ moon/
Also worth mentioning, due to the fact that Pale Moon is not based on the latest Firefox version, but on Firefox ESR, some extensions may not work on Pale Moon.