Firefox Now Has an Official Apt Repository for Debian and its Derivatives

[Gerowen]

Firefox has been the default web browser on many Linux distributions for a very long time, though the method by which it got installed varied from one distribution to the next.  The package maintainers for each distribution would package Firefox for their distribution specifically, which means that whenever there's an update, there's usually at least some lag time between release from Mozilla and packages being shipped to downstream Linux distributions.  Debian itself only officially ships the "ESR" versions of Firefox with their "stable" release, and Ubuntu's apt package for Firefox is actually just a meta package that installs the snap version, a behavior that has drawn its fair share of criticism.  You always had the option of just downloading the binary yourself, but this did not "install" Firefox.  Sure, you could run it right from the archive, but it didn't add desktop or menu shortcuts and it didn't hook into the system's package manager for automatic updates; it had its own separate updater just for Firefox, kinda like the Windows version.

Today however I spotted an article stating that Mozilla has stood up an official repository for "apt", the Debian package manager that is also in use by Ubuntu, Linux Mint and many other Debian derivatives.  This means that once you add this repository there are a few advantages you can benefit from:

1) It hooks into the apt package manager, which means that when you check for and install updates for your operating system and other applications, Firefox will be included in that check.
2) Users of Debian "stable" or other LTS style distributions that ship the ESR package can now get more up to date, stable releases of Firefox directly from Mozilla instead of waiting for a new ESR release.
3) It gives users of Ubuntu, or one of its snap based derivatives, who might have objections to using the snap version of Firefox for one reason or another, a more "native" version, directly from Mozilla, that should launch faster and be able to better handle integrating with system themes, using system fonts, etc.

Mozilla's instructions on setting up the repository can be found here:

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

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

I suppose if nothing else this will make it clearer to make sure you are getting the latest builds and nothing fishy has happened to it from a repository owner. I never really put any thought into if the files were coming directly from Mozilla rather than from the distribution owners.