Mozilla has been making some waves lately with their push for making Firefox into an “AI browser”. They are doing this in a way that is alienating a significant subset of its userbase who have long been advocates of Firefox as a browser made for the users. I am not going to wade into that debate too much. I certainly don’t envy their position. Firefox has been losing market share consistently for years now. There is a lot of preasure to do something to remain relevant, but in my opinion shoving a lot of “AI” tools with dubious value to the user isn’t the way to go. On the other hand there is a valid argument to be made that some “AI” tools like local translation are a win for user privacy compared to relying on web services like Google Translate for doing the same.
Now some only really use one browser and/or are looking to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and if you were going this route I wouldn’t totally blame you. Personally, I have found a lot to like about Vivaldi as a Google Chrome alternative. However, as a Chromium based browser it isn’t a perfect fit for those hoping to hold out against the Chromium hegemony or resist the tide of browser engine monoculture. see this post on moving to Vivaldi
I think there is another valid approach in using one of the numerous forks of Firefox out there. Waterfox seems to be one of the more established options with good governance and a healthy community. Each should have install options you can follow, and the following guide on installing a binary application could be largely transferable, just replacing waterfox paths with whatever they are for Zen or LibreWolf
Install Guide
From this point on this is an install guide aimed at Ubuntu or Debian based linux distro users, though it ought to apply to linux desktops more broadly I suspect.
Flatpak, and ppa are installation options for Waterfox, and each are probably fine, but also you can download the binary and install it manually. For modern browsers that have their own update and sandboxing mechanisms Flatpak, snaps, or ppa all feel like a bit of overkill in that they replicate a lot of that without much benefit.
However installing binaries straight away isn’t quite as ergonomic, and there are a couple extra steps to get the end result on par with apps installed via other routes. For example, one quality of life issue is getting integration with your desktop environment - application menu entry, icons, and being able to launch it like any other application.
I am going to aim to write this for less experienced users, but will assume you are comfortable editing a text file and knowing how file paths work.
I like to create a ~/bin folder in my home directory for items like this, but maybe you’d prefer to make a ~/Programs directory. You can name this folder whatever you like, really.
| Quick note: ~/bin is just a shorthand for /home/[yourUsername]/bin
You extract the Waterfox archive file into this directory. You can do this via CLI, ex tar -xxvjf ./waterfox-x.x.x.tar.bz2 or just in the right click menu in most file managers with “extract” option item. In either case you may need to flatten the contents of what is extracted. You dont need or want a waterfox-6.6.7 directory that contains a waterfox directory just mv waterfox up out of that extra container.
You sould be able find the Waterfox executable in there. It should just be named waterfox, no filename suffix like a .exe in windowns. Once you locate that right click and select Run just to test that it works. Note the path to that executable file.
Now lets create a desktop entry file.
You can do this via file manager, but navigating and especially making changes in root file system locations can be a bit of a chore in GUI file managers, so consider just doing this next part via CLI.
sudo touch /usr/share/applications/waterfox.desktop
touch just creates the empty file. So then, lets fill it in. This will use nano, a text editor included in a lot of distros that I think is a little easier than vi for most folks.
sudo nano /usr/share/applications/waterfox.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name='Waterfox'
Exec='/home/yourUsername/bin/waterfox/waterfox'
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;Internet
Icon=/home/yourUsername/bin/waterfox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png“ctrl+x” to quit “y” to confirm save
Give it a few seconds, and gnome shell should pick that up and now you can launch waterfox like any other app.