Introducing Mozilla’s Firefox Nightly .deb Package for Debian-based Linux Distributions

Great news for people using Firefox Nightly on Debian-based Linux distributions (such as Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others): installing, updating, and testing the latest Firefox Nightly builds just got a lot easier. We’ve set up a new APT repository for you to install Firefox Nightly as a .deb package. These packages are compatible with the same Debian and Ubuntu versions as our traditional binaries. If you’ve previously used our traditional binaries (distributed as .tar.bz2 archives), switching to Mozilla’s APT repository allows Firefox to be installed and updated like any other application. Your feedback is invaluable to us, so don’t hesitate to report any issues you encounter to help us improve the overall experience.

Adopting Mozilla’s Firefox Nightly .deb package offers multiple benefits:

• you will get better performance thanks to our advanced compiler-based optimizations,
• you will receive the latest updates as fast as possible because the .deb is integrated into Firefox’s release process,
• you will get hardened binaries with all security flags enabled during compilation,
• you will not have to create your own .desktop file,
• you will be able to continue browsing after upgrading the package.

To set up the APT repository and install the Firefox Nightly .deb package, simply follow these steps:

# Create a directory to store APT repository keys if it doesn't exist:
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings

# Import the Mozilla APT repository signing key:
wget -q https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -O- | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc > /dev/null

# The fingerprint should be 35BAA0B33E9EB396F59CA838C0BA5CE6DC6315A3
gpg -n -q --import --import-options import-show /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc | awk '/pub/{getline; gsub(/^ +| +$/,""); print "\n"$0"\n"}'

# Next, add the Mozilla APT repository to your sources list:
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc] https://packages.mozilla.org/apt mozilla main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list > /dev/null

# Update your package list and install the Firefox Nightly .deb package:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox-nightly

And that’s it! You have now installed the latest Firefox Nightly build .deb package on your Debian-based Linux distribution.

For those of you who would like to use Firefox Nightly in a different language than American English, we have also created .deb packages containing the Firefox language packs. To install a specific language pack, replace fr in the example below with the desired language code:

sudo apt-get install firefox-nightly-l10n-fr

To list all the available language packs, you can use this command after adding the Mozilla APT repository and running sudo apt-get update:

apt-cache search firefox-nightly-l10n

We hope this new installation method makes it easier for people on Debian-based Linux distributions to test and provide feedback on the latest Firefox developments. Your participation in the Nightly community plays a critical role in helping us deliver the best possible browser experience.

Following a period of testing, these packages will become available on the beta, esr, and release branches of Firefox.

Thank you for your support, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Edit (November 8, 2023): 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.

Edit (October 31, 2023): Based on feedback from our readers, we’ve updated the installation steps to align with the latest best practices. Instead of storing the de-armored key in /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d, the steps now keep the armored signing key in the /etc/apt/keyrings directory.