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> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is direct

> Getting the latest version with features and security fixes is key to having a good experience whenever you use Firefox. Now, our new APT repository is directly connected to the Firefox release process, so you will receive the latest updates whenever we make them available. Tip: you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version. In the past when I've installed Firefox through a .deb, it has had this annoying habit of requiring me to restart my browser whenever it updates in the background. I'll be going about my day and all of the sudden every URL will redirect me to about:restartrequired [0] and I'll have to shut everything down to keep going. It's not clear from this announcement if they've fixed that or not. If they haven't, I'll probably just continue to install Firefox from the .tar.gz files they provide [1]. If you drop them in a directory you have write permissions to, Firefox can auto-update itself the same way it does on Windows, without any forced interruptions. [0] https://otechworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/restart-firefox-using-about-restartrequired-page.png https://otechworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/restart-fi... [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w_install-firefox-from-mozilla-builds https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w...

vetinari 3y ago
The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it): it needs to close the files from the old package and open the ones from the new package. Hence the restart. You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session. The flatpak build avoids this problem by keeping both versions on the disk, up until you stop the app. Only at this time, the old version is removed, and the next start will be the new version.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > it just doesn't complain about it This is the key point. I'm assuming that it downloads the update and then waits for me to agree to install it, but however it works it doesn't interrupt my browsing while I'm in the middle of something.
  - gcp 3y ago
    This is how Mozilla's own updater works (if you use the .tar.gz version), but the distro package updater just overwrites everything without waiting and applications like Firefox have no control over that. As a user, you'd really want to disable unattended updates for such software. It's not an issue for these .deb packages because they enable the (experimental) forkserver.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  The deb version does more than complain, it can also crash and have tabs crash due to needing restart.
  - gcp 3y ago
    The whole point of the about:restartrequired warning is to avoid this problem. If you're crashing, I hope you've been filing bugs.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  > You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session. I hated the required restart with a passion when they first started it because restoring the previous session often failed. Once that worked, it was merely miserable (you still have to log in to all your sites).
  - RamRodification 3y ago
    > you still have to log in to all your sites Are you running very tight cookie/session settings or something? A restart definitely does not result in having to log in again for the stuff I'm logged in to.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it) You're mixing up two problems here. There's "please restart to update" that you can ignore/postpone, and there's "I have already updated and now going to sites is mostly broken" that you can't.
mfsch 3y ago
I’m not sure about these stable packages, but for the nightly packages they introduced recently they explicitly mention on [1] that you can keep browsing: > Following community discussions, we have updated the post to highlight that Firefox can continue browsing after an APT upgrade, allowing people to restart at their convenience. [1]: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozillas-firefox-nightly-deb-packages-for-debian-based-linux-distributions/ https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozi...
- lolinder 3y ago
  Oh, that's great! Between that very clear statement and the fact that in this post they call out that "you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version", it sounds like they've finally fixed it!
TrianguloY 3y ago
One of the benefits of kde offline updates is that this never happens, things are never updated while you are using them. You need to restart from time to time though, I do it weekly.
- curt15 3y ago
  Restarting your whole system is not necessary for the firefox flatpak though -- updates are installed in a parallel directory and applied the next time the user re-launches Firefox.
kbrosnan 3y ago
I expect this would still be a problem for this .deb. The package manger is doing the updating which is what causes the problem for Firefox. The restart notice provides a way for Firefox to signal to the user that the binary on disk doesn't match the binary running. Without the warning Firefox used to randomly crash when creating new processes. The warning allows the user to perform an orderly restart (not great but neither are crashes). As the parent states the tar.gz will avoid the problem as it uses Mozilla's update process that is used across platform. A minimum set of steps to use the tar.gz are * Extract tar.gz to somewhere like /opt/firefox/ * Set the permissions so that the user or a group can read, write and execute /opt/firefox/ * Create or copy a Firefox.desktop file [1] and place it in the correct folder [2] so it shows up in your launcher [1] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/de... [2] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ar01s02.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ar01...
- dTP90pN 3y ago
  Mozilla implemented a fork server to fix this issue. It is enabled in the new deb packages, but not yet in "normal" Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1609882 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1609882 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850026 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850026
- agateau 3y ago
  Shameless plug: I wrote a tiny script to install Firefox from their tar.gz, without requiring root access: https://github.com/agateau/tmfi https://github.com/agateau/tmfi.
wkat4242 3y ago
It does that on FreeBSD as well yeah. Not a huge deal for me as I only install updates when I'm not in the middle of things. I love an OS that doesn't force me to do anything <3
- Symbiote 3y ago
  Disabling auto-updates on Ubuntu/Debian is, obviously, just a configuration option.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    What is that option? I would love to disable firefox auto-updates.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      For normal Apt updates [0] sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades or edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades. For Snap [1] snap refresh --hold=forever firefox Or for all Snap applications snap refresh --hold=forever (Various other useful options are documented, like only updating at weekends, or when the application isn't running.) [0] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates [1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/930593/how-to-disable-autorefresh-in-snap https://askubuntu.com/questions/930593/how-to-disable-autore...
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    True, I was thinking more of Windows and MacOS. I chose FreeBSD for a few things like jails, ZFS as first class citizen and no corporate "invented here" crap like snaps. But I really hate coming back to my pc after a few days and find that it has rebooted to install an update, all my open work be damned. There's no good way to turn that off, nor the telemetry.
pmontra 3y ago
I remember that it required me to restart whenever I opened a new tab, or I wouldn't be able to use that tab. Anything in already opened tabs still worked. Then I switched from Ubuntu to Debian and I also installed the tar.gz from Mozilla. As you wrote, it updates itself. As a welcome coincidence I checked the version right now and the Help, About Firefox dialog showed me an updating status. There is a updates/0/update.status file in Firefox directory that had the "downloading" content. It's "applied" now. The update.version file contains "122.0" and there is a 20 MB file names "update.mar". The file "last-update.log" contains many "PREPARE PATCH", "EXECUTE PATCH", "FINISHED PATCH" lines on shared libraries file and other files. Apparently the new version is waiting in the updated/ directory. The About dialog still reports 121.0.1 and has a "Restart to update Firefox" button. I'll wait to see what happens and how long I can keep using the current version before having to switch to the new one.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > I remember that it required me to restart whenever I opened a new tab, or I wouldn't be able to use that tab. Anything in already opened tabs still worked. That might have been the case. I almost invariably open every link in a new tab, so for my use case it would have felt the same as nothing working.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    Tree Style Tab user?
    - lolinder 3y ago
      You'd think so, but no.
malfist 3y ago
I'm pretty sure that forced restart is from the snap package, and you don't have that without snap.
- ric2b 3y ago
  The snap package actually doesn't have this issue at all, it just waits for you to close the browser to switch to new version but you can keep using it for however long you want without Firefox complaining like it does if a package manager messes with some files while it is open.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Nope. There are many weird things about snap, but it actually handles Firefox updates very smoothly.
  - tjoff 3y ago
    No, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.
amarshall 3y ago
> it has had this annoying habit of requiring me to restart my browser whenever it updates in the background This happens because Firefox detects that its files have changed underneath it while its running—this can cause problems due to, I guess, the multi-process architecture and sandboxing not liking mismatches between what is running and what it might start. The built-in updater performs updates in a way that doesn’t cause this. Package managers that do not update Firefox in-place (e.g. Nix) do not have this problem either. As noted in a sibling comment, this new package does not seem to have the issue either. I wonder what they changed.
krferriter 3y ago
That's a terrible user experience. I don't remember that happening when I used Firefox through .deb files or the Arch AUR packages. I don't want it actually updating in the background. I'm fine with it checking for updates and even pre-staging the update files for the next time I restart the browser. Swapping out the app files underneath a running browser process in the background, so no new content can be opened, sucks. Maybe I didn't use the .deb files and just used the .tar.gz. I could see that. I know I used .deb files for Chrome but I can't recall for Firefox, now that I'm thinking about it maybe I did just use the .tar.gz. I remember having to create and edit .desktop files for it. Seems counterintuitive to have a better update experience through a manually managed .tar.gz unzipped directory than through a package file actually meant to be managed through a more formal package manager.
thorvaldsson 3y ago
This behaviour can be disabled by blacklisting Firefox from APT's unnattended upgrades. I wrote[0] something up on this last year if anyone is interested. [0]: https://hth.is/2023/01/10/blacklist-firefox/ https://hth.is/2023/01/10/blacklist-firefox/
compsciphd 3y ago
in the past, this was because firefox was very dynamic loadable (i.e. not keeping everything it needed in memory) so when you updated, you were overwriting data that it depended on. I argued that this was a positive reason for snap (updating the image behind the scenes and only getting the new version when you restart). However, snap designers (in my not so humble opinion) missed the boat (to put it politely), as one can only upgrade a snap image when the application is not running. So one has to exit, update, wait, restart. This is missing one of the primary benefits of container based delivery for desktop applications.
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
Why does this even matter, when session restore works reliably? So reliably that from time to time, when I want to restart for some reason, I'm killing it with all 9es from some already running htop. Klicking the icon. Yah yah yadda yarr yarr, all new, no I don't wanna sync, no tour, FO! (meanwhile disabled all that shit) Every tab there as it was before.

vetinari 3y ago

The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it): it needs to close the files from the old package and open the ones from the new package. Hence the restart. You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session. The flatpak build avoids this problem by keeping both versions on the disk, up until you stop the app. Only at this time, the old version is removed, and the next start will be the new version.

lolinder 3y ago
> it just doesn't complain about it This is the key point. I'm assuming that it downloads the update and then waits for me to agree to install it, but however it works it doesn't interrupt my browsing while I'm in the middle of something.
- gcp 3y ago
  This is how Mozilla's own updater works (if you use the .tar.gz version), but the distro package updater just overwrites everything without waiting and applications like Firefox have no control over that. As a user, you'd really want to disable unattended updates for such software. It's not an issue for these .deb packages because they enable the (experimental) forkserver.
kzrdude 3y ago
The deb version does more than complain, it can also crash and have tabs crash due to needing restart.
- gcp 3y ago
  The whole point of the about:restartrequired warning is to avoid this problem. If you're crashing, I hope you've been filing bugs.
bachmeier 3y ago
> You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session. I hated the required restart with a passion when they first started it because restoring the previous session often failed. Once that worked, it was merely miserable (you still have to log in to all your sites).
- RamRodification 3y ago
  > you still have to log in to all your sites Are you running very tight cookie/session settings or something? A restart definitely does not result in having to log in again for the stuff I'm logged in to.
Dylan16807 3y ago
> The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it) You're mixing up two problems here. There's "please restart to update" that you can ignore/postpone, and there's "I have already updated and now going to sites is mostly broken" that you can't.

mfsch 3y ago

I’m not sure about these stable packages, but for the nightly packages they introduced recently they explicitly mention on [1] that you can keep browsing: > Following community discussions, we have updated the post to highlight that Firefox can continue browsing after an APT upgrade, allowing people to restart at their convenience. [1]: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozillas-firefox-nightly-deb-packages-for-debian-based-linux-distributions/ https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozi...

lolinder 3y ago
Oh, that's great! Between that very clear statement and the fact that in this post they call out that "you will still need to restart Firefox for the latest version", it sounds like they've finally fixed it!

TrianguloY 3y ago

One of the benefits of kde offline updates is that this never happens, things are never updated while you are using them. You need to restart from time to time though, I do it weekly.

curt15 3y ago
Restarting your whole system is not necessary for the firefox flatpak though -- updates are installed in a parallel directory and applied the next time the user re-launches Firefox.

kbrosnan 3y ago

I expect this would still be a problem for this .deb. The package manger is doing the updating which is what causes the problem for Firefox. The restart notice provides a way for Firefox to signal to the user that the binary on disk doesn't match the binary running. Without the warning Firefox used to randomly crash when creating new processes. The warning allows the user to perform an orderly restart (not great but neither are crashes). As the parent states the tar.gz will avoid the problem as it uses Mozilla's update process that is used across platform. A minimum set of steps to use the tar.gz are * Extract tar.gz to somewhere like /opt/firefox/ * Set the permissions so that the user or a group can read, write and execute /opt/firefox/ * Create or copy a Firefox.desktop file [1] and place it in the correct folder [2] so it shows up in your launcher [1] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/de... [2] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ar01s02.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ar01...

dTP90pN 3y ago
Mozilla implemented a fork server to fix this issue. It is enabled in the new deb packages, but not yet in "normal" Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1609882 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1609882 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850026 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850026
agateau 3y ago
Shameless plug: I wrote a tiny script to install Firefox from their tar.gz, without requiring root access: https://github.com/agateau/tmfi https://github.com/agateau/tmfi.

wkat4242 3y ago

It does that on FreeBSD as well yeah. Not a huge deal for me as I only install updates when I'm not in the middle of things. I love an OS that doesn't force me to do anything <3

Symbiote 3y ago
Disabling auto-updates on Ubuntu/Debian is, obviously, just a configuration option.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  What is that option? I would love to disable firefox auto-updates.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    For normal Apt updates [0] sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades or edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades. For Snap [1] snap refresh --hold=forever firefox Or for all Snap applications snap refresh --hold=forever (Various other useful options are documented, like only updating at weekends, or when the application isn't running.) [0] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates [1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/930593/how-to-disable-autorefresh-in-snap https://askubuntu.com/questions/930593/how-to-disable-autore...
- wkat4242 3y ago
  True, I was thinking more of Windows and MacOS. I chose FreeBSD for a few things like jails, ZFS as first class citizen and no corporate "invented here" crap like snaps. But I really hate coming back to my pc after a few days and find that it has rebooted to install an update, all my open work be damned. There's no good way to turn that off, nor the telemetry.

pmontra 3y ago

I remember that it required me to restart whenever I opened a new tab, or I wouldn't be able to use that tab. Anything in already opened tabs still worked. Then I switched from Ubuntu to Debian and I also installed the tar.gz from Mozilla. As you wrote, it updates itself. As a welcome coincidence I checked the version right now and the Help, About Firefox dialog showed me an updating status. There is a updates/0/update.status file in Firefox directory that had the "downloading" content. It's "applied" now. The update.version file contains "122.0" and there is a 20 MB file names "update.mar". The file "last-update.log" contains many "PREPARE PATCH", "EXECUTE PATCH", "FINISHED PATCH" lines on shared libraries file and other files. Apparently the new version is waiting in the updated/ directory. The About dialog still reports 121.0.1 and has a "Restart to update Firefox" button. I'll wait to see what happens and how long I can keep using the current version before having to switch to the new one.

lolinder 3y ago
> I remember that it required me to restart whenever I opened a new tab, or I wouldn't be able to use that tab. Anything in already opened tabs still worked. That might have been the case. I almost invariably open every link in a new tab, so for my use case it would have felt the same as nothing working.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Tree Style Tab user?
  - lolinder 3y ago
    You'd think so, but no.

malfist 3y ago

I'm pretty sure that forced restart is from the snap package, and you don't have that without snap.

ric2b 3y ago
The snap package actually doesn't have this issue at all, it just waits for you to close the browser to switch to new version but you can keep using it for however long you want without Firefox complaining like it does if a package manager messes with some files while it is open.
lolinder 3y ago
Nope. There are many weird things about snap, but it actually handles Firefox updates very smoothly.
- tjoff 3y ago
  No, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

amarshall 3y ago

> it has had this annoying habit of requiring me to restart my browser whenever it updates in the background This happens because Firefox detects that its files have changed underneath it while its running—this can cause problems due to, I guess, the multi-process architecture and sandboxing not liking mismatches between what is running and what it might start. The built-in updater performs updates in a way that doesn’t cause this. Package managers that do not update Firefox in-place (e.g. Nix) do not have this problem either. As noted in a sibling comment, this new package does not seem to have the issue either. I wonder what they changed.

krferriter 3y ago

That's a terrible user experience. I don't remember that happening when I used Firefox through .deb files or the Arch AUR packages. I don't want it actually updating in the background. I'm fine with it checking for updates and even pre-staging the update files for the next time I restart the browser. Swapping out the app files underneath a running browser process in the background, so no new content can be opened, sucks. Maybe I didn't use the .deb files and just used the .tar.gz. I could see that. I know I used .deb files for Chrome but I can't recall for Firefox, now that I'm thinking about it maybe I did just use the .tar.gz. I remember having to create and edit .desktop files for it. Seems counterintuitive to have a better update experience through a manually managed .tar.gz unzipped directory than through a package file actually meant to be managed through a more formal package manager.

thorvaldsson 3y ago

This behaviour can be disabled by blacklisting Firefox from APT's unnattended upgrades. I wrote[0] something up on this last year if anyone is interested. [0]: https://hth.is/2023/01/10/blacklist-firefox/ https://hth.is/2023/01/10/blacklist-firefox/

compsciphd 3y ago

in the past, this was because firefox was very dynamic loadable (i.e. not keeping everything it needed in memory) so when you updated, you were overwriting data that it depended on. I argued that this was a positive reason for snap (updating the image behind the scenes and only getting the new version when you restart). However, snap designers (in my not so humble opinion) missed the boat (to put it politely), as one can only upgrade a snap image when the application is not running. So one has to exit, update, wait, restart. This is missing one of the primary benefits of container based delivery for desktop applications.

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago

Why does this even matter, when session restore works reliably? So reliably that from time to time, when I want to restart for some reason, I'm killing it with all 9es from some already running htop. Klicking the icon. Yah yah yadda yarr yarr, all new, no I don't wanna sync, no tour, FO! (meanwhile disabled all that shit) Every tab there as it was before.