Firefox 96 preparations [Solved]

[cliffcoggin]

One of the recommended preparations for the change to Firefox 96 is to make a copy of the Mozilla profile using

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cp -R .mozilla .mozilla-backup

Where would I find this backup and how would I restore it if the change should go wrong? Is it even necessary to make such a backup if a Timeshift snapshot is made immediately prior to the change?

[karlchen]

Hello, Cliff.

The Mozilla directory tree, holding your Firefox user profile, .mozilla, is located in your home directory.
The environment variable $HOME will point to it. The expanded value in your case might be /home/cliff, assuming that your login name is cliff.

Therefore the safer way of creating the mentioned Firefox user profile backup would be:

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cd $HOME
cp -R .mozilla .mozilla-backup

1. Question:

   Where would I find this backup

   Answer:
   In $HOME. In your case this might be /home/cliff, provided your login name is cliff.
2. Question:

   how would I restore it?

   Answer:
   By executing

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   cd $HOME
   rm -rf .mozilla
   mv .mozilla-backup .mozilla

3. Question:

   Is it even necessary to make such a backup if a Timeshift snapshot is made immediately prior to the change?

   Answer:
   Creating that backup can never do any harm.
   Whether Timeshift includes .mozilla, depends on whether you have configured Timeshift to include your home directory in its snapshots.
   By default Timeshift will not include user home directories in its snapshots. In case your home directory is not included in the snapshots, then your Firefox user profile will not be included, either.

Regards,
Karl

[karlchen]

Note, please, Cliff and others, who read this thread:

The update from (Linux Mint provided) Firefox 95.x (or older) to genuine Mozilla Firefox 96.0 will not change the settings in your user profile.
The settings, which will be different, are the Firefox default settings.

These Firefox default settings are applied

• on a fresh Firefox installation, when the user invokes Firefox for the very first time (i.e. no user profile present, yet) in order to create the new user profile.
• on an existing user Firefox profile only for those settings, for which the user had never changed the settings, which came as the former Linux Mint Firefox default settings.
  This case is, what most of us Mint users, who already had and used an older Firefox version than 96.0, will experience.

The previous Linux Mint Firefox default settings can be found in the files
/usr/share/ubuntu-system-adjustments/firefox/distribution.ini
/usr/share/ubuntu-system-adjustments/firefox/firefox.js,
but only before the Firefox 96.0 update has been installed.

After the Firefox 96.0 update has been installed,
the file /usr/share/ubuntu-system-adjustments/firefox/firefox.js will be gone, and
the file /usr/share/ubuntu-system-adjustments/firefox/distribution.ini will have drastically reduced content.

As a consequence, after having updated Firefox to 96.0, you should go through all Preferences dialogues and verify that the settings are, as you wish them to be. In case they are not, change those settings, which are not to your liking.
Doing so will write the changed settings into your Firefox user profiles.
Later Firefox updates will not change your self-configured settings in your user profile (as a rule).
So this check and change operation should be a one-time job. The same operation, which you also had performed, after you had invoked Firefox for the very first time.

• Cf. Clem's official blog article on Updating to Firefox 96
• Also cf. Clem's blog article on Linux Mint signs a partnership with Mozilla
  (Do not miss the section "Frequently Asked Questions")

[cliffcoggin]

Many thanks Karl. That was very succinct.

I shall make the change tonight when I can put aside a few hours to deal with any problems.

[majpooper]

Good explanation and I thought I understood what the migration however when I just checked by LM 20.3 About Mozilla Firefox it confused me a bit. At the top it indicates:
Mozilla Firefox for Linux Mint
mint-001 - 1.0
Updates disabled by your system administrator
96.0 (64bit)

I never disabled updates for Firefox or anything else for that matter.
And I thought FF 96.0 would not be the mint version

[trytip]

My privacy settings were changed upgrading from FF95 to FF96 not sure what else, it's been a while since using firefox, i haven't used it after they went quantum. Firefox send data was enabled and help improve, not sure what else they want now. i'm tired of improving developers work while they steal data i never agreed to opting in. why are we the users always opted in with no notice?
i thought i did something wrong but now i don't remember how my settings were before.
anyway, this is a very important thread for Firefox users. Chrome and Chromium users now also have to deal with the same thing having FLoC enabled.

[cliffcoggin]

The upgrade to FF96 went without a hitch, being downloaded and installed in less than a minute. The five extensions I use remained operative. The appearance was unchanged except for the return of the damnable skinny scroll bars, but I'll sort that out later.

The only change I made immediately was to remove Google and Bing from the search engines. Other settings were unchanged as far as I can tell.

[karlchen]

Hi, Cliff.

You might like to check your Privacy settings perhaps. The previous Linux Mint default privacy settings were more strict than the Mozilla default privacy settings are.

Regards,
Karl

[trytip]

this is ridiculous, if you use firecfg/firejail with your system you can not view/open files to read you need to move them to downloads or a firejail whitelisted folder (but that's not my complaint). i just got done redoing my settings, now i need to redo them again if i want to test this firefox. whoever did this needs to be slapped, and what studies is firefox doing behind my back?
i'd rather use google chrome, at least i know i'm getting screwed. nothing is sacred any longer. and of course the scrollbars and whatnots in about:Lconfig need redoing again.








who knows what else they injected in this update that goes unseen. at this point i see linux as a big joke.

[karlchen]

Hello, Trytip.

None of the privacy related settings, which can be seen in your 3 screenshots, have been introduced by Firefox 96.0. They have been there fore years.
The Firefox telemetry settings are all "opt out".
In the past, the Mint provided Firefox default settings took care of this activity.
On Ubuntu, users have had to do so themselves once on every fresh Firefox installation for years.
As you can opt out, the whole matter is not as dramatic as many people pretend it were.
Opt out and go on with life.

Regards,
Karl

[trytip]

of course you're right, get on with my life. but if it's no big thing why is it developers automatically turn everything ON and the USER needs to opt out? for a novice this would go unseen or not even understood. it's the shadyness of how they sneak things in when the user is not looking that's a concern. wouldn't it be nice if at the same time the app is phoning home, it would pop up a dialog and say "we have your information ready to be sent, would you like to review, send or cancel?"

you know the saying "give them an inch, they take a mile"
i'm only testing FF, i'm not a mozilla user, just pointing things out. the thing is that i archived my settings, restored them to my liking and then they were back. maybe i was in a hurry and did something wrong. shouldn't we get payed for sending our data to developers? i mean essentially if we improve the work for developers what's left for them to improve?

[SMG]

I never disabled updates for Firefox or anything else for that matter.
And I thought FF 96.0 would not be the mint version

Clem explained both of those points in the "Bug Reports" section of his "Linux Mint signs a partnership with Mozilla" blog post (karlchen provided the link above).

[AZgl1800]

The upgrade to FF96 went without a hitch, being downloaded and installed in less than a minute. The five extensions I use remained operative. The appearance was unchanged except for the return of the damnable skinny scroll bars, but I'll sort that out later.

The only change I made immediately was to remove Google and Bing from the search engines. Other settings were unchanged as far as I can tell.

you and me both, I set the Scroll Bar Width to 32

in the about:config window go to the search bar of Firefox. Then, entered

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widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size

and edit it to

32

[cliffcoggin]

Hi, Cliff.

You might like to check your Privacy settings perhaps. The previous Linux Mint default privacy settings were more strict than the Mozilla default privacy settings are.

Regards,
Karl

Karl.

As far as I can tell they are the same: strict tracking protection, custom history, no suggestions in search bar, no permissions for anything, block dangerous and deceptive etc. HTTPS only. As for data collection, I don't recall what it was set for previously because I vacillated so often between permitting and banning data collection. I'll take the safest course now and ban it.

Regards, Cliff.

[cliffcoggin]

in the about:config window go to the search bar of Firefox. Then, entered

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widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size

and edit it to

32

Thanks but in fact

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widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override

is the setting to choose. Like you I find 32 to be a good size.

[majpooper]

I never disabled updates for Firefox or anything else for that matter.
And I thought FF 96.0 would not be the mint version

Clem explained both of those points in the "Bug Reports" section of his "Linux Mint signs a partnership with Mozilla" blog post (karlchen provided the link above).

THX much - got it.

[senjoz]

After updating Firefox on my desktop computer to version 96.0.1, my certificate disappeared. I had to install it again. I spent a lot of time trying to find authorization code.

On my laptop I did not have that problem.

Regards, Jože

[LittleScriptMan]

you and me both, I set the Scroll Bar Width to 32

in the about:config window go to the search bar of Firefox. Then, entered

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widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size

and edit it to

32

There is another pref,

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widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size

set to 0.75 by default that has influence on the scrollbar, meaning 75% of the width of the bar is dedicated to the slider. You can set it to any decimal between 0 (nothing) and 1 (completely filled). This may save some screen width if you consider the white borders on each side of the slider having no real purpose.

This one

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widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.allow-buttons

set to false by default can be set to true if you want up and down arrows at the top and bottom of the bar.

And this

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widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.round-thumb

allows round borders on top and bottom of the bar if set to true.

[AZgl1800]

There is another pref,

Code: Select all

widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size

set to 0.75 by default that has influence on the scrollbar, meaning 75% of the width of the bar is dedicated to the slider. You can set it to any decimal between 0 (nothing) and 1 (completely filled). This may save some screen width if you consider the white borders on each side of the slider having no real purpose.

This one

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widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.allow-buttons

set to false by default can be set to true if you want up and down arrows at the top and bottom of the bar.

And this

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widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.round-thumb

allows round borders on top and bottom of the bar if set to true.

Hey now, that is some great info, thanks for the additional research.
I too, thought that having a White border on each side of the slider was foolish piece of crap, and it just plain looked Fugly...

now I can reduce the width to 20, and that is still pretty darn fat... very for me, very usable, as my eyes are very tired these days...

[LittleScriptMan]

Checking a little further, it seems that with FF96, this pref :

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widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size

doesn't seem to work anymore, is deprecated and has been replaced with :.

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widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override

(same as before with .override at the end)