The version of Firefox that comes with 14.2 is very old.
The `/patches` folder has something a bit newer but still 2 years old.
I expected to find the latest Firefox on SlackBuilds.org, but I can't.

Can somebody help please?

P.S.
I know I can download it manually from Mozilla's website, but it feels windows like. I wanna do it the Linux way: via a package manager.

Firefox-68.12.0esr was upgraded in /patches 2020-08-24, immediately after mozilla released it. You must have misread the changelog.

Firefox 68.12 was released Aug. 25th, 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefo..._68_through_77).

By examining previous Firefox releases in Slackware 14.2, one can reasonably assume Pat will upgrade Firefox to the next ESR soon, as the 68 line is now EOL. This has already been discussed in the forum; use the search dialogue to find it.

You need to either accept that some software is older on 14.2, or not use it. Do not try to create your own Frankenstein Slackware.

If it really bothers you that much, run -current. But I would suggest to let it go and settle for 14.2 and wait for 15.0 to be released.

Its Firefox ESR. I want the regular Firefox, which is currently at version 80 or something.

Yes, but the current version of Firefox is 80 or something. Version 68 is several years old.

Then download the SlackBuild for Firefox from -current, and try running it on Slackware 14.2. This won't work, however, because Firefox is closely tied to rust. I have no idea about other dependencies. You'll have to decide how much work you want to put into compiling current Firefox versions on Slackware 14.2. I imagine if you try hard enough you can get it to work, however.

For user applications like this you can do this - create your own upgraded packages.

But don't try this on system libraries. At that point you'll no longer be running Slackware and you'll be on your own. Don't do this.

To get an idea of just how much work this can be, go read all of alien bob's blog posts about ktown (https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/). Note he stopped supporting ktown on 14.2 quite some time ago. Then you'll begin to have some idea of the challenges involved.

Why not use flatpak?

https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.mozilla.firefox

I don't have any flatpak applications on my computer, but flatpak is available on SlackBuilds.org: https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1...sktop/flatpak/

Then you should have an updated, self-contained Firefox.

a number of LQ slackware users do this for firefox

In my experience, you can just download Firefox and run the executable. But, that script glorsplitz posted above looks solid to do what you want.

I agree, it would work. But I also want it to be always up-to-date. I cant go and manually download a package every time its updated.
If Firefox was in SlackBuilds.org, that would solve my problem.

Someone already gave you a way to solve that.

SBo doesn't support packages that are already in Slackware.

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But that means I will have to manually run the script every time Firefox is updated.
I have (theoretically) approximately 10 such packages. And every package has its own `script`.
Its tedious to run them all, very time there are updates.


Cool. Now I understand why its not there.

So you want the latest and greatest of everything, but you don't want to do any work yourself, not even running a simple script? Slackware-14.2 is definitely not the distro for you.

3 members found this post helpful.

I don't think it matters how it's installed so long as, it's the version you want and it works...?

Those are called "static" builds. I suggest just extracting it under /opt or /usr/local and creating a launcher. It should still warn you when there's an update and you simply do the same every time or write a script that simply unpacks the tarball to your chose location.

//edit: I seem to remember that it was possible to run it from your ~ and that it would then automatically update regardless?

Firefox does not warns of new version. I have a 4 years old Firefox from 14.2, it it does not notify me that there is a newer version.

Sounds interesting.