Mozilla Firefox 121 Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New
The big news for Linux users in Firefox 121 is the enablement of the Wayland compositor by default instead of XWayland. Apart from improving the graphics performance, this also brings support for touchpad and touchscreen gestures, swipe-to-nav, per-monitor DPI settings, and other goodies.
Also new in Firefox 121 is support for force-underlining links in websites, which may be useful for people with achromatopsia, as well as a new floating button to simplify the deleting of drawings, text, and images added in PDF documents.
Update (by Roy)
For IBM:
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The Talospace Project: Firefox 121
We're still in the process of finding a place to live at the new job and alternating back and forth to the tune of 400 miles each way. Still, this weekend I updated Firefox on the Talos II to Fx121, which fortunately also builds fine with the WebRTC patch from Fx116 (or --disable-webrtc in your .mozconfig), the PGO-LTO patch from Fx117 and the .mozconfigs from Firefox 105.
How-To Geek:
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Firefox 121 Arrives With Windows and Linux Enhancements
Mozilla Firefox receives major updates roughly every four weeks, giving the web browser a steady stream of bug fixes, new features, and security enhancements. Firefox 121 will start rolling out today with new performance enhancements, usability improvements on macOS and Linux, and more.
OMG Ubuntu:
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Firefox 121 released, now defaults to Wayland on Linux
For the Ubuntu 23.10 release, the Firefox Snap runs in Wayland mode by default (and like many of you I’ve noticed nothing but bountiful benefits resulting from the switch).
Mozilla’s workshop elves were clearly happy with the success of that trial as they’ve now chosen to make Firefox 121 run in Wayland mode by default for all Linux users (who use Wayland; the browser runs under Xorg/X11 as well as it ever did).
Why is Firefox enabling native Wayland mode by default a big deal? And how does that mode differ to the xWayland mode the browser has been running in on Wayland sessions prior to this release?
LWN:
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Firefox 121.0 released
Version 121.0 of the Firefox browser is out. Along with the usual pile of security fixes, this release add the ability to force links to be rendered with underlines and use of Wayland by default if it is available: ""This brings support for touchpad & touchscreen gestures, swipe-to-nav, per-monitor DPI settings, better graphics performance, and more.""
Wayland focus:
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Firefox 121.0 Finally Defaults to Wayland When Available
Firefox web browser announced the new monthly 121.0 release this Tuesday! For Linux, the release finally default to Wayland session when available, meaning for Ubuntu 22.04 and higher (exclude Snap), Fedora Workstation, and other GNU/Linux with recent GNOME Desktop. With Wayland, it has better support for touchscreen & touchpad.
Another One:
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Mozilla ships Firefox 121.0 with Wayland enabled
Firefox on Linux hit another milestone as Mozilla defaults to Wayland backend instead of XWayland X11 emulation in Firefox 121. It’s a logic step as XWayland emulation introduces bugs from both Wayland and X11 worlds together so better run Wayland directly.
As Fedora has provided Firefox on Wayland backend for years, this change affects mainly Ubuntu and its Firefox/Snap users (if Canonical decides to follow Mozilla here), Firefox shipped as Flatpak and next Firefox ESR and Thunderbird releases.
And what to expect? Beside all the goodies I need to mention Wayland differences and regressions from X11.