Mozilla Seeks Feedback for Firefox Nightly ARM64 (AArch64) Binaries on Linux
After launching the Firefox official DEB packages for Ubuntu/Debian-based distributions, Mozilla now plans to offer official AArch64 binaries for download to its Linux users (finally!). As a Raspberry Pi user, I can say that this was one of the major blockers of using certain distros that came with an older Firefox release.
The even better news is that the Firefox ARM64 binaries for Linux are available as both downloadable archives in the tar.bz2 format from Mozilla’s website (you can try them here) and as DEB packages for Ubuntu/Debian systems, which you can install on your AArch64 distro using these instructions for the firefox-nightly package.
Planet Mozilla:
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Firefox Nightly Now Available for Linux on ARM64
We’re excited to share an update with people running Linux on ARM64 (also known as AArch64) architectures.
We want to be upfront about the current state of our ARM64 builds. Although we are confident in the quality of Firefox on this architecture, we are still incorporating comprehensive ARM64 testing into Firefox’s continuous integration and release pipeline. Our goal is to integrate ARM64 builds into Firefox’s extensive automated test suite, which will enable us to offer this architecture across the beta, release, and ESR channels.
BetaNews:
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Firefox Nightly expands to Linux on ARM64
Mozilla has announced Firefox Nightly for ARM64. This release will cater to the growing demand for support on ARM64 platforms, commonly referred to as AArch64.
Feedback from the community has led Mozilla to expand the availability of Firefox Nightly. Users can now access the browser as both .tar archives and .deb packages, depending on their preference and requirements for installation.
OMG Ubuntu:
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Firefox Nightly is Now Available for Linux on ARM64 - OMG! Ubuntu
As I understand it most Linux distributions that support ARM64/AArch64 offer a native ARM version of Firefox in their repos (in Ubuntu that’s via snap) though some Linux ARM distros only offer Firefox ESR, which is a long-term support version lacking newer features.
It’s not been possible to get Firefox for ARM64 directly from Mozilla itself.
But that’s changing.
When Mozilla launched its own APT repo bringing DEB versions of Firefox to Debian users it received feedback from Linux ARM folks that they would like to see ARM64 builds added to it.
Mozilla has obliged; Firefox Nightly for ARM is now available through the Mozilla APT repo.