How do I switch Firefox to ESR on Linux Mint?

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I have a few questions for you guys and please be patient with this dumb newbie Linux user.  How do I switch the Firefox on to the ESR channel on the firefox?  Or am I to install it seperately from the regular firefox? Or do I just download the installer from the Mozilla and it will take care of itself?

If I do get ESR, will I get updates via the update manager or will it get updates directly like the Waterfox?

The reason I ask it is that I feel like Mozilla just went too far with 77 in the term of bloat and especially the removal of address bar option from the about:config.  I don’t want to go down that path anymore.  Am I overreacting and it is better than it looks?

Thank you guys 🙂

Picky

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You can download the ESR versions from this page, including for Linux. You can install it as a separate program to your regular Firefox, if you choose (by using a different location).

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Ok, back up your existing bookmarks somewhere for retrieval/import later and whilst there perhaps backup extension settings (depending on what extension you use)

As Linux Mint does not provide the option for Firefox ESR, you will need to add the mozilla repo to your Mint.

In order to do this, you will need to open up a Termnal in Mint and add the following:
NOTE: Each line needs to be entered [Enter] in the Terminal after copying
(best to copy and paste to avoid errors)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install firefox-esr

Once this is done, you should have firefox ESR 68.9 installed (correct at time of publishing). The repo has now been added which also updates Firefox ESR, when updates are available. Open and check Firefox ESR all works as you will need to add your favorite extensions (then re-apply earlier saved settings) /configure ESR settings, and import bookmarks (that you saved earlier)

Once you are happy with ESR (as I know you will be) you can go into synaptics package manager and remove Firefox 77.x or whatever version you previously had installed.

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Microfix’s suggestion for moving to ESR is solid, but unfortunately, simply moving to ESR won’t actually fix the problem, of course. It just delays it until the ESR support period ends and you end up having to move to a new ESR that has the problem you were trying to avoid.  It’s the same reason that I don’t much recommend moving from Windows 7 to 8.1 if you don’t like 10… while 8.1 was the last Windows version I used and if modified properly, can be a much better 7 imitation than 10 can, it doesn’t solve the problem.  It only delays it for a few more years, and then you are in the same situation– Windows 10, using unsupported Windows, or not using Windows.

For those that do not know, the pref in question removes the “one off” search buttons from the URL bar.  For those of us who do not search from the URL bar, because URL bars are for entering URLs, and search bars are for entering searches, they’re obnoxious and do nothing but clutter things up and invite accidental clicks.

For the time being, it is possible to remedy the change with an addition to userChrome.css, but even that looks to be a short-lived fix now (more below on that).  Note that the use of the word Chrome here has nothing to do with the Google browser… Mozilla had userChrome.css long before Google existed, let alone developed a browser.  “Chrome” refers to the visual styling of the UI, a common software development term at the time.

I just started Firefox now to see what the URL dropdown looked like, and the one-offs are not there, and it is 77.0.1.  I’m using the custom userChrome.css from Aris, developer of Classic Theme Restorer, one of the best addons for Waterfox and formerly for Firefox for people who like the pre-“let’s be Chrome” UI of Firefox.  It’s quite likely that the custom stylesheets had this as one of the options, which I would have used when setting it all up.  I don’t remember specifically anymore.

Mozilla has IMO been on the wrong path for years.  Every new release seems to have some thing like this, some feature that they delete just “because,” apparently out of spite of their users.  This pref was harming no one by just sitting there idle by the people who preferred the default setup.  There was no good reason to remove it, like so many other things they ripped out for no apparent reason.  It’s just a constant drip, drip, drip of things getting worse and worse. This strategy hasn’t worked ever since they first implemented it at about the time when Firefox’s rising market share began its freefall, but dagnabbit, they’re going to keep trying it until it works.  Keep trying that same thing and expecting a different result… one of these days, you’ll be feature-poor enough for people to flock to Firefox once again.  Sure, why not?

The key to why this happened was in the bug report in their bug tracker.  The person complaining about the removal of the pref mentioned the same argument I made above, regarding the uselessness of the one-off buttons in the URL bar dropdown for someone who does not search from the URL bar.

The Mozillian’s response was that they would like to get rid of the search bar too, and the development was all based on that.  They’re coming for your search bar too, and it doesn’t matter that having a separate search field is the way you want it.  It’s not about what you want, Firefox user, but what Mozilla wants!  Or, more truthfully, what Google wants.

If you remember back in the day, the Mozilla (suite) browser did not have a separate URL bar, but instead a search button that would cause whatever was in the URL bar to be interpreted as a search, not as a URL.  The innovation was to separate them when the experimental Phoenix browser arrived.  Phoenix later became Firebird, then Firefox.

Even though adding the search bar was an innovation they made years ago, now the thing to do is to get rid of it, because minimalism has replaced usefulness and functionality as the goal.  Chrome does not have a search bar, so Firefox, as always, must not have one either.

Incidentally, I was trying out Chromium recently, something I had never done back when everyone was switching from IE or Firefox to Chrome, and I found the lack of a search bar to be a real deal-breaker.  I had to use an addon to sorta kinda give Chrome a search bar, but it wasn’t as good as Firefox’s.  I would not have been able to complete my evaluation of Chrome without it… I would have been so put off by how bad the UI is that I’d have quit, the same as I always do when trying to utilize Windows 10 for testing purposes.

There was another ‘tell’ in the Mozilla discussion.  The discussion revealed that the user with the complaint was using userChrome.css to try to take back control of the browser, and the Mozillians referred to that as an “unsupported legacy feature.”  I was concerned before that userChrome.css was secretly on the chopping block, and now I am 99% sure of it.  That’s the last thing that makes Firefox minimally usable for me… the day they delete that is the day I remove Firefox completely and consider it a discontinued product, just as I now see Windows.  In my mind, Windows is, in a sense, a product that Microsoft once made, not one they still make now.

While there are some backend things in Firefox that are getting better with each release, the frontend just seems like it is in a frenzied race to the bottom.  It’s been like this for ages, but until the Quantum leap backward, it was always possible to fix Mozilla’s mistakes with addons.  Now that the mistake they made was to remove addons capable of fixing their other mistakes, we’re getting to see them much more clearly than ever before.

That was why I moved to Waterfox (now Waterfox classic), though I fear that this, too, will end up just being a delay rather than a solution.  When Firefox removes userChrome.css, my #2 browser will become Vivaldi, I think.

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I share your concern about Firefox and the Waterfox 🙁  How is Vivaldi is for you and what is it like?  I also have heard recommendation for Ungoogled Chrome and Brave in addition to Vivaldi, could they also be useful especially on Linux Mint? I am still looking for the future alternatives. Still, it feels like the browsers are in a race to bottom these days…

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Vivaldi is a Chromium derivative that is meant to provide maximum configurability.  On the backend, it’s Chromium, so not much difference there, but in terms of the UI, it’s quite a bit different, if you want it to be.

When you open the configuration menu, you will immediately see it has way more options than Chrome/Chromium.  You can have it use the classic-style menu bar, with File, Edit, View…, or you can have it hide in a button on the top left (when you open it, it’s still the same options, File, Edit, and so on) if you want more screen space.  It’s kind of a compromise between the right-side hamburger button of Chrome and the traditional menu bar.  Opera has that too, if I recall.  I think Vivaldi was founded by some of the original Opera devs, so in some ways, it’s the spiritual child of the old Opera, though not with the Presto rendering engine.

So far, all of the Chrome addons I have tried work with Vivaldi.

Vivaldi as such still is not as configurable as pre-57 Firefox or Waterfox Classic if you consider addons.  The userChrome.css rendering ability of Firefox is still a very powerful tool for changing the UI, so for now, Firefox proper is still closer to my ideal than Vivaldi.  Vivaldi still lacks the option of putting the tab bar below the URL bar and above the content, and the scrolling on Chromium browsers doesn’t even come close to the glassy smoothness of Firefox or Waterfox (although an addon called something like ’60 FPS scrolling everywhere’ helps a lot).  So, for now, Firefox remains my second choice, with Vivaldi third.

If Firefox were to lose userChrome.css, Vivaldi would move up one spot.  Vivaldi is still moving in the right direction… more customizability, more power for the user, diverging from the spartan UI offered by Chrome more and more.  It’s not quite where I want it yet, but it’s getting closer with each release.  Firefox, though, keeps getting worse.  If current trends continue, Firefox looks like it will leave me behind as it pursues Chrome unity, while Vivaldi continuously seeks to improve upon Chrome.

As far as usability… ungoogled Chromium and Brave exist on Linux, as does Vivaldi.  Ungoogled Chromium has the Chrome UI, and the last time I saw Brave, it did too, though they may also move toward greater customization.  They had a much more customizable version of Brave not that long ago, but they moved to the Chromium base and lost that in the process.  Some of the statements by devs at that time seemed to show openness to the idea of bringing the choices back, eventually.  Maybe some already have been added… it’s been a while since I tried it.

The best way to know if any of these will work for you is to try them.  If you don’t like any one of them, you can always remove it!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Elly

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