If you’re a web developer or power user, you may have heard that you can try out new features in Mozilla Firefox by installing Firefox Nightly. You might worry that you’ll have trouble installing or updating it.
If you use a Debian-based distro, including Ubuntu, there’s good news: Firefox Nightly .deb packages are available. With just a few commands, you may easily install and update Firefox Nightly.
What Is Firefox Nightly?
Firefox Nightly is a development version of the Firefox browser that’s released nightly, as the name suggests. While most Firefox users will use the stable version from the official website or their package manager, you might want to try the nightly version if you’re a developer or power user.
Web developers might want to test out their sites against upcoming changes to Firefox to make sure that future versions don’t break anything. Power users might want to try out new features before anyone else.
A post onMozilla’s Nightly blogannounced the .deb repository for Firefox Nightly. It simplifies installation of the nightly build by automatically updating it when a new version releases. It also separates the nightly version from any other versions, such as the stable ESR version of Firefox, included by default in many Linux distros.
Adding the Firefox Nightly Repository
Installing Firefox Nightly using the APT repository is easy. First, you’ll have to create a repository to store the cryptographically signed key to ensure that the .deb file actually comes from Mozilla.
Keys are stored in the/etc/apt/keyringsdirectory. Create it as root if it doesn’t already exist:
You’ll want toset the correct permissions with chmod:
This means that the directory will be writable, searchable, and readable for its owner (root) and searchable and readable for everyone else.
The next step is to download the key itself:
This pipeline might look complicated, but it’s quite simple. The wget command downloads the key from Mozilla’s server, sending it to standard output with the"-O-“option. Thetee commandoutputs it to the packages.mozilla.org.asc file in the directory you created earlier, while discarding any output to the terminal by sending it to /dev/null.
Next, check that you’ve installed the correct key with gpg:
Look carefully at the output string. It should read“35BAA0B33E9EB396F59CA838C0BA5CE6DC6315A3.”
If it does, it’s now safe to add the .deb repository. Create the file/etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.listas root and use your favorite editor to add this line:
Installing Firefox Nightly
With the Firefox Nightly repository added to your system, you can install it as with any other Debian/Ubuntu package.
Update your system by using apt as usual:
Next, you’re ready to finally install Firefox Nightly:
After that, you should see Firefox Nightly in your desktop environment’s application menu. To update Firefox Nightly from now on, update your packages as usual.
Now You Can Test Out the Latest Firefox Browser
With the ability to install and update Firefox Nightly using the APT package management system on Debian and Ubuntu, you’re able to try out the cutting-edge browser more easily than before.
