I wonder about the future of Firefox on Slackware 14.2, since 52.9.0 will be the last non-Quantum Firefox version and building Firefox Quantum require some tweaks (e.g. Rust, "--disable-stylo" in mozconfig).

Until now I was able to build current Firefox on Slackware 14.2.

But beginning with Firefox 61 it seems no longer possible since Firefox now requires GCC 6.1 or newer (Slackware 14.2 provides GCC 5.5). Building with LLVM isn't an option, because Stylo requires LLVM 3.9 or newer (Slackware 14.2 has LLVM 3.8) and the "--disable-stylo" switch isn't longer available.

If you want the latest firefox (or any version,actually), you don't have to build it. Download the tarball from mozilla, extract it to a folder of your choice and create a symlink in /usr/bin/.

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This, of course, I know

Since the binaries from mozilla.org are not fully free software and bringing a lot of bloat (meaning they are not build against system libraries) I rather build it myself.

Forum member ruario has a script that download and make a package of the latest firefox.

https://gist.github.com/ruario/9672798

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Hi,

Personally, I have problems with Firefox 60.0.2 on '-current'. My session will not re-init and I loose all my tabs. Especially pinned tabs. I tried using 'sync' but it too would not complete and the session would sometimes freeze.

I am holding at Firefox 60.0.1 for now.

No further investigation for this issue by me.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

I am trying to migrate to Palemoon exactly because of Firefox's disabling pure ALSA support. I honestly tried to like it, for about 3 months, but have grown to really despise Pulseaudio and it has become a real dealbreaker for me and that's a bit sad because I like Firefox especially since the reduced resource gobbling newer releases.

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I just upgraded Slackware 14.2 and it installed Firefox 60.2.2esr. After restarting the system and launching firefox it restored the half-dozen tab I had previous opened ... sort of. The tabs were all there, but the pages were blank. Clicking on refresh did nothing. I had to open a new tab and copy the address to the new tab; then the page was shown. More importantly, and critically, when I attempted to drag a tab firefox shutdown completely. If I restarted firefox, the tabs were all there. I have 4 monitors and I drag tabs around all the time. This is a must-have for me.

To get back in action I ended up restoring my system from latest back up and getting Firefox 52.9.0 back (I couldn't locate a package for the old version, so I just restored everything).

Before posting a message on the Mozilla forum I thought I'd search for this problem and came across this thread. So, please elaborate a bit. What do you mean by, "52.9.0 will be the last non-Quantum Firefox version"? What is 'Quantum'? Why would a Slackware 14.2 package update for Firefox not work? I should think that would be tested before being released. Could this be a configuration issue on my end?

Firefox was overhauled from version 58 [I think] and called Firefox Quantum. Basically it's a lot faster than it used it be, and they changed the design. More here:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/1...refox-quantum/

Slackware uses an ESR - Extended Support Release - version of Firefox. So after version 52 ESR, 60 was the next ESR release. I have had no issues with Firefox 60.2.2 on Slackware, it may be a config issue at your end.

Have a look at the changelog, you may find it useful. Did you update Rust and LLVM as it says below?

close firefox and try renaming temporarily your ~/.mozilla directory to something else so that it gets re-created blank whe you will start it again: it happened to me also and I had to create a new profile from scratch (might be just some incompatible extension: you can try also removing them one by one).

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I suppose if you are really determined to build the latest Firefox on 14.2, you could build a newer GCC locally and use that to build Firefox. What the official policy will be from Pat on future patches for Firefox, I'm not sure. My guess is that the latest ESR will be the last one for 14.2.

Rust and llvm are only required if you want to *build* firefox. They are not runtime dependencies, so they should have no effect on mfoley's issues.

@mfoley, like ponce, I suspect it is an issue with your profile. There were a LOT of changes when Firefox switched to the Quantum release and many extensions no longer work. Firefox is still notorious for needing to occasionally clear your profile to fix issues (how this is still a thing 15 years later, I have no idea... I've never needed to clear my Chrome profile), so that would be the first thing to try.

If you absolutely don't want to try a clean profile, the old package is in the pasture/ directory on your favorite mirror, but you won't see any additional updates to that version (since Mozilla doesn't provide them anymore).

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The whole "profile" idea sounds likely. I will give it a try removing my current profile. However, as I have a number of tabs opened that I *need*, that may not happen for several days. I'll post back when I've accomplished that.

Later ...

I tried removing the user profiles on a different computer, still Slackware64 14.2, but with no saved tabs I cared about. I then installed firefox 60.2.2esr. Interestingly, It wouldn't run so I had to run it at the command line to see the error that I also had to install a new zlib package. Hmmm. Anyway, this did appear to work. I was able to drag a tab to a new window without Firefox crashing. Looks likely that it's a profile issue. I haven't tried it on the original problem computer yet, but I will after saving off the tab links.

Nope - on my multi-monitor system with NVIDIA driver I deleted the profile and installed firefox 60.2.2. Still the same problem. If I drag a tab, Firefox crashes. Sucks, now I've got to find the old 52.9 package and reinstall that. Then I'll blacklist mozilla-firefox until perhaps Slackware 15.0. I hope I can find the old package in the /pasture package.

Later ...

OK, found the 59.2 in the pasture Slackware 64 repository. Installed it. All is well. I can drag tabs again. mozilla-firefox is blacklisted from further updates. I'm done messing with this.

just FYI another reason for the crash might be that you are using the depecrated (also by Nvidia) xinerama with your multimonitor setup.

There is an alternative: apulse: Apulse, a wrapper library that connects to ALSA.

I've already left Firefox for Waterfox. Palemoon and Vivaldi are also good, and work much better than Firefox anyway.