topic Re: Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu (Without Snap) in Discussions

Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu (Without Snap)

JNavas — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 01:47:03 GMT

Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu (Without Snap)

Re: Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu (Without Snap)

MarshWiggle — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 04:41:17 GMT

Thank you for these instructions. I already commented in the big pinned thread about Nova, and on the linked thread itself.

People who follow these instructions without deleting the snap need to know that these instructions give you a symlink in /usr/bin that's named firefox-esr.

/usr/bin/firefox continues to be a script that launches the version from the snap.

If you want to launch firefox by its usual name, you'll need to fix this.

Also, while the tar.xz of the ESR I downloaded earlier but did not install claimed to be version 153.6.0 esr, firefox-esr --version reports "Mozilla Firefox 140.17.0esr" It's possible that what we have in this apt repository is some kind of unmaintained orphan.

The instructions for adding the relevant apt repo posted on the mozilla site don't work for me, but they seem to involve a repo at https://packages.mozilla.org/apt whereas these instructions seem to have given me one at https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu/

Re: Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu (Without Snap)

JNavas — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 04:50:10 GMT

Thank you for the follow-up.

ESR 140 is the prior ESR version.

Re: Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu (Without Snap)

MarshWiggle — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 05:06:40 GMT

The instructions at the following URL are much harder to understand, and don't work out of the box unless you are already a gpg user. But I suspect they'll get you the later version. (I'm still working out how to undo what I've already done, and translate these instructions into something that involves a text editor rather than here-documents and tee.)

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w_install-firefox-deb-package-for-debian-based-and-ubuntu-based-distributions-recommended

Once you get the repo set up, install firefox-esr rather than firefox.

Following both sets of instructions naively will probably have unwanted effects.