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This is much better than the Snap. Snaps are slow and tend to ignore themes and preferences of various kinds. > Since the package comes from a PPA unattended-u

This is much better than the Snap. Snaps are slow and tend to ignore themes and preferences of various kinds. > Since the package comes from a PPA unattended-upgrades will not upgrade it automatically, unless you enable this origin: You probably don’t want Firefox to update automatically, without your knowledge. A Firefox upgrade means you must immediately restart the browser. If this happens in the background while you’re doing something important, it can easily ruin your day.

yoavm 5y ago
My Firefox updates automatically, and it never told me to immediately restart the browser. Most of the times I don't notice it at all, and sometimes I notice a small blue dot on the top right hamburger menu that asks me to restart. Never forced me, just asks. Moving from Arch to Debian I was disappointed not to find a Developer Edition package, but the official Linux release works just fine and I personally enjoy the auto-update mechanism.
- ghostly_s 5y ago
  Mine prompts me to restart when I load a new page, no option to postpone as fat as I've seen.
  - perihelions 5y ago
    The option is here: about:preferences#general ("Check for updates but let you choose to install them", if English localization)
    - kbrosnan 5y ago
      That pref is not present because it does not apply to distro updated Firefox such as a .deb.
  - TingPing 5y ago
    Because postponing isn't possible, the files changed from under it and their behavior is undefined.
- chimeracoder 5y ago
  > My Firefox updates automatically, and it never told me to immediately restart the browser. It happens all time time for me. Literally happened just a few minutes ago. It happens when you open a new tab or window, not when you're browsing within an existing tab. > Restart to Keep Using Firefox Developer Edition > An update to Firefox Developer Edition started in the background. You’ll need to restart to finish the update. > Your windows and tabs will be quickly restored, but private ones will not.
- TimeBearingDown 5y ago
  That is a really nice feature. The (only?) downside is less tight distro integration, less reliance on shared libraries which can be updated and bugfixed independent of the browser. I’m less convinced of that benefit in the face of seamless autoupdate though, here on Arch with the official package which does require me to restart.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
> You probably don’t want Firefox to update automatically, without your knowledge. A Firefox upgrade means you must immediately restart the browser. If this happens in the background while you’re doing something important, it can easily ruin your day. No not really? If I update it here on FreeBSD it stays working and it prompts me to restart the browser when I'm ready so it can start using the latest version which just got installed.
- Izkata 5y ago
  Firefox can upgrade in the background in two ways: Through its own internal mechanism, or (as Ubuntu did it pre-snap) with apt using unattended-upgrades. It's the unattended-upgrades one that does it without confirmation and blocks you from doing anything until you restart firefox.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  On Arch, it's 50:50 on if it will prompt for a restart, or just start having crashing tabs.
riquito 5y ago
I update Firefox on Fedora and nothing happens until I manually restart it
Seattle3503 5y ago
> You probably don’t want Firefox to update automatically, without your knowledge. A Firefox upgrade means you must immediately restart the browser. If this happens in the background while you’re doing something important, it can easily ruin your day. I run into this issue very often. I use private browsing heavily, so the forced restart is very disruptive to my workload. I lose all my tabs and saved state.
- gs17 5y ago
  It's subtly worse than that, I had unloaded tabs from a restored previous session, and the page it redirects to reminding you to restart overwrites them entirely when I tried to switch to them. At least private browsing tabs you were warned are a bit ephemeral.
- Izkata 5y ago
  Pre-snap, Ubuntu does this through unattended-upgrades, it's not Firefox doing it itself. You can disable it: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1279041/disabling-firefox-background-upgrades https://askubuntu.com/questions/1279041/disabling-firefox-ba...
  - Seattle3503 5y ago
    Wow thank you for this, I didn't even reiterate this was something I could fix.

yoavm 5y ago

My Firefox updates automatically, and it never told me to immediately restart the browser. Most of the times I don't notice it at all, and sometimes I notice a small blue dot on the top right hamburger menu that asks me to restart. Never forced me, just asks. Moving from Arch to Debian I was disappointed not to find a Developer Edition package, but the official Linux release works just fine and I personally enjoy the auto-update mechanism.

ghostly_s 5y ago
Mine prompts me to restart when I load a new page, no option to postpone as fat as I've seen.
- perihelions 5y ago
  The option is here: about:preferences#general ("Check for updates but let you choose to install them", if English localization)
  - kbrosnan 5y ago
    That pref is not present because it does not apply to distro updated Firefox such as a .deb.
- TingPing 5y ago
  Because postponing isn't possible, the files changed from under it and their behavior is undefined.
chimeracoder 5y ago
> My Firefox updates automatically, and it never told me to immediately restart the browser. It happens all time time for me. Literally happened just a few minutes ago. It happens when you open a new tab or window, not when you're browsing within an existing tab. > Restart to Keep Using Firefox Developer Edition > An update to Firefox Developer Edition started in the background. You’ll need to restart to finish the update. > Your windows and tabs will be quickly restored, but private ones will not.
TimeBearingDown 5y ago
That is a really nice feature. The (only?) downside is less tight distro integration, less reliance on shared libraries which can be updated and bugfixed independent of the browser. I’m less convinced of that benefit in the face of seamless autoupdate though, here on Arch with the official package which does require me to restart.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

> You probably don’t want Firefox to update automatically, without your knowledge. A Firefox upgrade means you must immediately restart the browser. If this happens in the background while you’re doing something important, it can easily ruin your day. No not really? If I update it here on FreeBSD it stays working and it prompts me to restart the browser when I'm ready so it can start using the latest version which just got installed.

Izkata 5y ago
Firefox can upgrade in the background in two ways: Through its own internal mechanism, or (as Ubuntu did it pre-snap) with apt using unattended-upgrades. It's the unattended-upgrades one that does it without confirmation and blocks you from doing anything until you restart firefox.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
On Arch, it's 50:50 on if it will prompt for a restart, or just start having crashing tabs.

riquito 5y ago

I update Firefox on Fedora and nothing happens until I manually restart it

Seattle3503 5y ago

> You probably don’t want Firefox to update automatically, without your knowledge. A Firefox upgrade means you must immediately restart the browser. If this happens in the background while you’re doing something important, it can easily ruin your day. I run into this issue very often. I use private browsing heavily, so the forced restart is very disruptive to my workload. I lose all my tabs and saved state.

gs17 5y ago
It's subtly worse than that, I had unloaded tabs from a restored previous session, and the page it redirects to reminding you to restart overwrites them entirely when I tried to switch to them. At least private browsing tabs you were warned are a bit ephemeral.
Izkata 5y ago
Pre-snap, Ubuntu does this through unattended-upgrades, it's not Firefox doing it itself. You can disable it: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1279041/disabling-firefox-background-upgrades https://askubuntu.com/questions/1279041/disabling-firefox-ba...
- Seattle3503 5y ago
  Wow thank you for this, I didn't even reiterate this was something I could fix.