Regular Firefox - Can I Add Beta Firefox? (a little wordy)

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MtnDewManiac
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Regular Firefox - Can I Add Beta Firefox? (a little wordy)

Post by MtnDewManiac »

I must be getting old because I am not feeling particularly adventursome these days. But a year or three back, someone set my computer up so that I had both the stable (release?) version of Firefox and the Beta one, "side-by-side," if you will, so that they were separete entities - if I am not mistaken, each one auto-updated to newer versions without messing up the other.

I would like to be able to set Mint (14 Xfce, 32-bit) like that. I am not really having issues with regular Firefox. I mean... It crashes sometimes, but it seems to mainly only do it when I have over 100 tabs open and I only have a gig so the crashes might be my fault; and when I run Firefox again, it still works. One time I thought that the (then current) beta crashed less than the regular, but I might have been mistaken. Mainly, I just want to try it out - and do so in a way that my regular Firefox is not affected in any way.

A couple of things: I don't want the Aurora one. I have read that it isn't beta, it's unstable. I have nothing against the command line, but I don't want to have to live in it because I porked (borked? something like that, IDK) my system and I really don't know how anyway. I can copy and paste handy directions into it, sure... But I'd sort of need a working desktop environment (etc.) in order to actually get those directions from the Internet, lol. Also: I actually have two Firefoxes (Firefoxen?) on my computer already; I have the regular linux Firefox and I have the Microsoft Windows Firefox with Silverlight. When I say, "I'd like to keep my regular Firefox as per normal," I actually mean that I'd like to keep both of them.

I glanced at the software forum before I decided to post this. There is a thread there but it's title is about the Aurora version, and as I mentioned that one is too scary for me. I didn't see a thread for putting the beta one beside the regular.

Although... If you can show me how to make all three - well, all four counting the Microsoft Windows one - coexist side by side and if you know for a fact that running the Aurora won't mess up either my system in general or one of the other Firefoxes, I might be interested in at least looking at it. But if not, that's okay too. It turns out that I like Mint well enough that I don't want to break it. :D

If it makes a difference - and I fear that it probably does - I also have Thunderbird installed and am currently trying it out pending the discovery of a better email app (is there a Pegasus for linux?). I did read something about just putting the PPA for the... the not regular Firefoxes in my sources, but I get the impression that doing so would cause my updater to replace the Firefoxes I have now with the beta one - and that it would do the same to Thunderbird and I most definitely don't want my email app "going experimental" on me. Also, if it matters, the Windows Firefox I have installed, I got all that from adding Compholio's PPA. It seems to be playing nice with everything and his patched version of Wine is also playing nice. If trying to add the beta Firefox might mess that up, just let me know and I will stop wanting to.

As always, thanks in advance,
MDM
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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xenopeek
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Re: Regular Firefox - Can I Add Beta Firefox? (a little word

Post by xenopeek »

The beta channel for Firefox is indeed in a PPA, here: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+arc ... refox-next. It only contains Firefox packages, so shouldn't mess with your Thunderbird. However, this would overwrite your current Firefox version.

If you want to test the beta alongside your current Firefox version, you could download the beta manually from http://www.mozilla.org/beta/ and extract it to your home folder and run it from there. That will likely still share your preferences files with your installed Firefox version though.
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MtnDewManiac
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Re: Regular Firefox - Can I Add Beta Firefox? (a little word

Post by MtnDewManiac »

Oh. Bummer on the "sharing." I wouldn't mind if it could read them, but if it used the same ones, sooner or later it'd end up writing to them, and with my luck, that's when the thing would break.

Right now, my Microsoft Windows Firefox and my linux Firefox seem to be total and complete strangers, with different settings altogether. I wonder how Compholio magicked that? Maybe I should ask him if he knows a way to do what I want. I think he's a smart one - seems like his web page states that he's a PHD or the like. Of course it could be something totally unrelated to computers, lol.

Well, thanks for setting me straight, xenopeek.
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
grizzler

Re: Regular Firefox - Can I Add Beta Firefox? (a little word

Post by grizzler »

What you want is possible without mixing the settings. That will just require a little more work.

Without going into it too deeply (in case you decide not to try it anyway), you would need the separately installed versions Vincent mentioned and also separate profiles for each version's settings. You could then either start each version from a different .desktop file, using the -P option to specify a profile, or create a single new .desktop file which starts Firefox with the -ProfileManager option to select which one you want. You would have to start with that option at least once anyway, to create a couple of new profiles.

Edit: actually, you will need separate .desktop files anyway, as the executable files will be in a different location for each version.
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