How to Update Firefox from Terminal on Ubuntu Linux PCs

Learn how to upgrade Firefox using Terminal on an Ubuntu Linux PC

Mozilla Firefox is a well-known feature that allows background updates. It downloads updates automatically and installs them without the need for an update to Firefox like updates to apps for the iOS as well as Android devices.

However, the automatic update feature of Firefox isn’t as easy as it seems. The majority of the time users must restart Firefox to finish the update. In addition, Firefox even forces the user to restart their browser in order to use it. To avoid this to avoid unnecessary downloads every once in a time, users may decide to disable the auto-update feature and instead opt to upgrade Firefox manually.

If you’ve decided to set up Firefox updates manually, or Firefox is not able in installing an update, you are able to follow the below commands to update Firefox using your terminal in Ubuntu as well as other Debian operating systems.

Update Firefox using Terminal by using Ubuntu standard repository

You can upgrade your Firefox installation to Ubuntu by importing Ubuntu’s standard repository. Ubuntu standard repository making use of an apt (previously apt-get) tool for managing packages.

sudo apt update sudo apt install firefox

To run the older Ubuntu versions (released prior to 2014)

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install firefox

This method requires installing the most recent version of Firefox that is available within Ubuntu’s standard repository. Ubuntu repository. It is important to note that the Firefox release cycle is different in comparison to that of the Ubuntu release cycle, and it’s likely that the Ubuntu standard repository doesn’t contain the most recent Firefox package.

To avoid this it is possible to install to the Mozilla repository on your computer. This will ensure that you are running the most reliable version of Firefox.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install firefox

But the presence of multiple PPAs on your system that are running the same program (read Firefox) may lead to conflicting packages. In this case you might want to avoid the appropriate package and instead download the most recent Firefox version from the website address by using the traditional WGET command.

Install and download Firefox using the command line by using the command line option ‘wget’

To avoid conflicts between packages with multiple PPAs, you can make use of WGET program to download to get the most recent Firefox version directly from Mozilla servers. Then, extract and transfer the installation files to the appropriate locations to finish the update.

It’s an easy process. It works with the majority of Linux distributions. Not just Ubuntu or any other Debian distributions based on Debian.

wget -O firefox-latest.tar.bz2 "https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest&os=linux64&lang=en-US" tar -xvjf firefox-latest.tar.bz2 sudo mv firefox /opt/ sudo ln -sf /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

Let’s summarize what these commands do:

• WGET is downloading the latest Firefox archive file
• Tar will extract the archive file downloaded
• Mv command shifts the folder that was extracted to the /opt folder typically the directory used for non-standard software installation in Ubuntu.
• ln creates an symbolic link for the recently downloaded Firefox binary that is located in the directory /usr/bin in order that the default Firefox installation Firefox is replaced with the version that is updated Firefox.

Following this the user is able to start the Firefox the command firefox via the command line, or launch it through the GUI to launch the latest Firefox version. Firefox.

We hope that you will find the information provided on this page useful. Should you need help or have concerns please let us know via the comment section below.