How To Manually Install Firefox Browser on Linux

This brief tutorial shows you how to manually install Firefox Web Browser on Linux.

First go to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ to download the tar.bz2 file. This file does not contain sources, but pre-compiled binary package. If you like command line, use the following command to download.

64 bits

wget https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/45.0.1/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-45.0.1.tar.bz2

32 bits

wget https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/45.0.1/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-45.0.1.tar.bz2

Once downloaded, change your working directory to the download directory and extract the tar.bz2 file.

tar xvf firefox*.tar.bz2

A new directory named firefox will be created in the current directory. As I said earlier, these files are pre-compiled binaries and Firefox is ready to run. There’s no need to compile from source. To start Firefox, run the firefox script in firefox directory.

./firefox/firefox

If the built-in Firefox browser is running right now, you need to close it before you issue the above command. All your Firefox configurations in your home directory will be read by this manually installed Firefox browser.

If Firefox files are stored on your home directory, then only you can run this manually installed Firefox browser, so in order for other users to run it, we move it to /opt/ directory.

sudo mv firefox/ /opt

Create a symbolic link

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

To start Firfox in the future, press ALT+F2 and run this command:

firefox-new

That’s it!

Enjoy!