Hello everybody, I use Linux every day but I am just a common user with a problem: on my Debian 9 run laptop I have Firefox 68.8 esr 64 bit, and so far I am unable to install a new version of Firefox, but non-esr. I have downloaded the tar file and run the usual commands tar xjf... but nothing happened, just like if I had done nothing. So I asked for help in a linux forum, and the guys there told me two things:I could download Firefox as snap package(first time I heard of it),with the link provided I downloaded Firefox , run the commands, but at a certain moment I got the news that the installation was impossible because "core 18" was missing. The other thing the guys told me was to install Firefox from flatpak, and it was almost the same story: after some minutes I got the message that Firefox could not be installed because it needed a more recent version of flatpak.
So, back to square one, I am stuck on Firefox esr but I would like to change to Firefox 71 or 72. Can someone help me? Thanks from foyle, the poor linux user.

I think the tar command you used will just have extracted files from the tar ball. It probably created a directory you need to drop down to. In the directory there is likely to be a readme containing instructions how to build/make the binary

Once you've extracted the files they should be in a folder "firefox". It depends on where you extracted them. The folder could be in your "home" folder. If it is it will have sub-folder called "program" and in there there'll be an executable "firefox".
Create a symlink to that executable either in your ~/bin folder or in /usr/bin. Then you can run firefox by typing firefox in a terminal or creating a desktop file to run it. You can copy the format of any desktop file by changing the appropriate detail.

SymlinkJust to be sure, I'm assuming you downloaded the tarball from mozilla.

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Download the latest version from mozilla.com (firefox-76.0.1.tar.bz2)
untar the tarfile
mv the resulting directory (firefox) to a useful place: /usr/sbin for access by all users, perhaps, or a directory under $HOME for a single user. I have it in $HOME/bin - but I'm the only user on this desktop.
run the file named firefox within the firefox directory.
Create a desktop icon or panel launcher with the path to the executable ($HOME/bin/firefox/firefox %u) on this box)

There is nothing to make. The mozilla tarfile is a precompiled binary package.

EDIT: petelq: I just pulled that tarfile down. firefox is in the firefox directory...there is no program directory. Otherwise what you posted is correct.
Also, note that once installed, firefox can be configured to update itself automatically...I don't recall if that's the default or not. I originally installed ver 66. It's currently at ver 76

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68.8 is the very newest ESR version available and probably your distro doesn't offer any newer (non-ESR) ones (because non-ESR) releases do not live all that long).
As for security and bugfixes it is equivalent with Firefox 76 (68 + 8).

Those are old and out of support already. As I mentioned above, 76 is the latest non-ESR version and they live about 2 to 3 months only.
As soon as 77 will be released there will be a 68.9ESR one too.

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Only if you install it in a user accessable directory (like your home dir).
A user-mode firefox cannot update itself when it's located in a system dir, like /usr/firefox or such. As the normal distro package is in a system dir it can only be updated by that distro's package tools (as root or through sudo).

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Thank you guys, it is almost unbelievable(I am NOT exaggerating): after minutes, almost hours of unuseful attempts...I opened the firefox folder as one of you told me to do,and there was a purple/purplish icon, named Firefox, I click on that, it appeared "run" on th screen, and it happened, goddness me, the browser opened its reddish furry loveable face in front of me, and automatically updated itself, then I restarted. Just that and only that. It needed, just from the beginnig, nothing else than a stupid click on an icon, nothing else, still I don't believe it. Probably I have bothered you all for NOTHING. Thank you all, anywayhttps://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/images/icons_lq/icon10.gif

ehartman: Excellent information. Learning happening (again). Good point about the auto-update feature.

When I installed the non-ESR version it was because I perceived a difference between the ESR version and the latest on my Windows boxes. I suppose there is a short lag for the ESR releases, given that they are "routed" through the distributions repositories, but I think I was mostly comparing the version numbers, not knowing of the relationship between the 68.x versions and the 7x versions.

So my understanding of what you've said is that the OP already has the latest and greatest and need not fool around with changing to the other 7x series. Yes?

The ESR versions do lack the newer features (and their new bugs <grin>) introduced in versions 69 and later. Pure bugfixes and security patches are backported by the mozilla team TO the ESR release. Compare dates of release:
(taken from archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases)

So it's mozilla itself that releases both versions, the distro only decides which one they want to include.

PS: there is an ESR version for Windows too:
The current ESR is getting "long in the tooth", so probably mozilla will release a higher numbered ESR version soon, maybe even 77.0

Thanks. You're right of course but I was doing it from memory and I'm not as young as I once was!

Not yet:
firefox 77.0 and 68.9ESR have been released without a sign yet of a newer ESR release:
and, as you can see, 77 even already had a bug-fix minor update to 77.0.1
And there are the first 78.0 beta releases out (up to b3) too.

PS: the difference between ESR and "normal" versions used to exist in thunderbird too, but nowadays they only release the ESR ones, the normal versions never get any further than beta, so the newest versions here are 68.9 (which isn't called ESR anymore) and 77.0b3

I gave firefox 76 a try yesterday. It handles HiDPI scaling much better than esr68 (there's no need to force the DPI scaling in the 'about:config' page anymore). Seems like the next ESR will carry version number 78, and is coming soon (edit: 2020-06-30).

ESR Landing Process
Firefox Release Calendar