Install Firefox 59 On Ubuntu 17.10 / 16.04 LTS / LinuxMint / CentOS

In this Tutorial I will show you how to install Firefox 59.0 on Ubuntu 17.10 / 16.04 LTS /14.04 LTS,LinuxMint 17,Fedora 27 and CentOS 6.X / 7.x.

Firefox most commonly used browsers by everyone and one of the standard browsers too.

It is an opensource browser and it is developed by Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation and available for Multiple Operating systems (ie) Windows, Linux, Mac OSX. and it comes with its private mode and powerful plugins.

Firefox Released its new stable Version 59.0 on March 13,2018

What's New in Firefox 59.0?

Performance enhancements:

• Faster load times for content on the Firefox Home page
• Faster page load times by loading either from the networked cache or the cache on the user’s hard drive (Race Cache With Network)
• Improved graphics rendering using Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP) for Mac users (OMTP for Windows and Linux was released in Firefox 58)
• Drag-and-drop to rearrange Top Sites on the Firefox Home page, and customize new windows and tabs in other ways

Added features for Firefox Screenshots:

• Basic annotation lets the user draw on and highlight saved screenshots
• Recropping to change the viewable area of saved screenshots
• Enhanced WebExtensions API including better support for decentralized protocols and the ability to dynamically register content scripts
• Improved Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities.
• Implemented RTP Transceiver to give pages more fine grained control over calls
• Implemented features to support large scale conferences
• Added support for W3C specs for pointer events and improved platform integration with added device support for mouse, pen, and touch screen pointer input
• Added the Ecosia search engine as an option for German Firefox
• Added the Qwant search engine as an option for French Firefox
• Added settings in about:preferences to stop websites from asking to send notifications or access your device’s camera, microphone, and location, while still allowing trusted websites to use these features
• Various security fixes
• Firefox Private Browsing Mode will remove path information from referrers to prevent cross-site tracking

So how to install Firefox 59 on Ubuntu / LinuxMint / CentOS?

Method 1 (For Debian based systems) Via PPA

Best and easy way is to upgrade firefox by updating the Repository, it will automatically upgrade to the new version if the PPA is updated

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Method 2: Via tar file -- applicable for all distributions

Step 1: Download The Latest Version of Firefox 59 from their FTP using wget

For 32 bit systems

wget https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/59.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-59.0.tar.bz2

For 64 bit systems

wget https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/59.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-59.0.tar.bz2

Step 2: Extract the tar package

tar -xjf firefox-59.0.tar.bz2

Step 3: Move the Firefox folder to opt

Remove the Older version of Firefox if it's there

sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox58

sudo mv firefox /opt/firefox59

Step 4: Create the symbolic link for new Firefox

sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefoxold

sudo ln -s /opt/firefox59/firefox-bin /usr/bin/firefox