I've done that as well. These days I run on the beta channel. Haven't had a lot of crashes with either. With the beta channel, I tend to click the restart to update button once a week or so.
On Arch linux, I ended up installing the tar.gz from mozilla and I let the browser update itself. Arch packaging is kind of redundant for this. It just adds time and middlemen that I don't want anyway. If there's a critical security update, it just increases the amount of time it takes for that fix to get to you. Regardless of whether you use stable, beta, or nightly. It does add a bit of hassle for e.g. getting a menu item with the correct icon in Firefox. I do the same with a few other things that know how to self update.
That should work on Debian as well. But a .deb package from Mozilla is nice of course.
I use Nightly exclusively. Unless you are somehow installing Nightly updates in a way that the binary is owned by a user who isn't you (ie, owned by root), Nightly will never force you to restart, it just forever has the green dot on the hamburger menu.
This is true for me on both Windows (and my user is part of the Administrator group, thus can write to a global c:\Program Files install) and Linux (and Firefox is installed to a directory in $HOME to simplify the process of non-packaged binary management).
Now, I also have Firefox (stable) installed as a .deb (to fulfill the browser dep). If the .deb gets upgraded by apt, that Firefox suddenly bricks itself until I restart. And this is intentional, btw, given how Firefox interacts with itself to do process isolation.
Everything I say here has been true for roughly the past decade.
I installed firefox straight from firefox.com on Manjaro and am using the beta channel. It self updates as they release new versions just like on windows and mac. I've been using the beta channel for many years and completely without issues. This is the fastest way to receive browser updates. Straight from the developers and without 3rd parties concerning themselves with repackaging things.
Snap/flatpak/distro packaging is redundant for this. I do the same with Intellij and a few other things. Annoyingly, chrome does not have arch packages so I'm dependent on some community package.
I use Firefox ESR on desktop with Debian stable as well. I've never felt the need to update it, while several times, when reading about things that break in non-ESR releases, I was glad I didn't use non-ESR versions.
Agreed. I started using Nightly — instead of my usually Beta¹ — for the up-to-date GTK+ 3.2x compatibility, but I like some of the pre-release features, and it almost never crashes on me
1: On Ubuntu you can use their Firefox Beta PPA² as long as you don't mind that it replaces release-version Firefox.
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.
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.
Would you prefer stable only getting crucial security updates and never release updates to speed things up? Eventually Nightly would be completely different from stable, especially with the switch to Rust. So then Mozilla would have to maintain 2 completely different versions of FF - that's a lot more work!
A better middle-ground is to let things get tested by those who opt-in to it (using Nightly and Beta versions), and slowly trickle changes down. That way none of the published versions are so different that Mozilla needs more staff to handle the different versions. And of course, stable users have far fewer issues than nightly/beta users. Certificate expirations throw a wrench in the whole system, but even if you made FF stable never update, you'd still have a problem because the cert expired.
You can also just download the tar ball from Mozilla and run that. It takes care of keeping itself up to date. I do that on Manjaro because I want my updates straight from the source. I'm on the beta channel, so my browser updates frequently and it simply indicates when there is an update and then I can choose when to restart the browser. Works on Ubuntu as well.
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.
I use firefox nightly as it seems to be a bit better IMO in many regards than the "stable". Sure there are some releases which aren't great but thats why it is nightly.
Maybe I should fire a Nightly channel up in the PortableApps.com Platform alongside Stable and Beta for Firefox like we do for Chrome (Stable, Beta, Dev). I'd need to write a custom installer to pull it down, but I still have a mostly functional one from the old process.
Beta and earlier users tend to be different in a lot of ways from regular Firefox users. Soft launching surely helps the download servers, but a large point is to watch for new crashes, so that any emergency fixes can be put in before unthrottling the release.
Past issues include antiviruses that crash Firefox because of their invasive monitoring. While ideally these things would be caught by QA or early adopter users, there's no way to test all possible combinations of software.
I recommend the Firefox Aurora channel. It's a nice balance between bleeding edge and beta. That said, I've used Firefox Nightly for years and I've found bugs, as expected, but nothing critical.
One caveat is that some people are annoyed by the daily update notifications. If you set the about:config pref "app.update.silent" to true, Firefox should never show you an update dialog:
On Arch linux, I ended up installing the tar.gz from mozilla and I let the browser update itself. Arch packaging is kind of redundant for this. It just adds time and middlemen that I don't want anyway. If there's a critical security update, it just increases the amount of time it takes for that fix to get to you. Regardless of whether you use stable, beta, or nightly. It does add a bit of hassle for e.g. getting a menu item with the correct icon in Firefox. I do the same with a few other things that know how to self update.
That should work on Debian as well. But a .deb package from Mozilla is nice of course.
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