Firefox on Debian stable is so old that websites yell at you to upgrade to a newer browser. And last time I tried installing Debian testing (or was it debian unstable?), the installer shat itself trying to make the bootloader. After I got it to boot, apt refused to work because of a missing symlink to busybox. Why on earth do they even need busybox if the base install already comes with full gnu coreutils? I remember Debian as the distro that Just Wroks™, when did it all go so wrong? Is anyone else here having similar issues, or am I doing something wrong?
You are literally describing the idea of Debian. Yes, stable is old, but that is the whole purpose. You get (mostly) security updates only for a few years. No big updates, no surprises. Great for stuff like company PCs, servers, and other systems you want to just work™ with minimal admin work.
And testing is, well, for testing. Ironing out bugs and preparing the next stable. Although what you describes sounds more like unstable, the one where they explicitly say that they will break stuff to try out other stuff.
So, everything works as intended and advertised here. If you want a different approach to stability, I guess you will have to use a different distro, sorry.
I guess when you last tried it, it was at a time when a new stable came out, so testing was more or less equal to stable.
About the firefox: It ships Firefox ESR these days, meaning you get an older, less often updated tested firefox (with security updates, of course). Again, this is the whole point. Less updates, less admin work, more time to find and fix bugs. Remember the whole Quantum add-on mess, for example?
As others have said, you can install other versions of firefox (like the “normal” one) via flatpak, snap… nowadays. The same goes for other software, where you would need the newest and shiniest version sooner. I’m using debian on my work/uni laptop and a bunch of servers, and it works pretty well for me.
This is why Debian is my server of choice, and my work desktop of choice.
OP, There are some flavors of Debian out there that are more rapid release, like LMDE, Siduction, Sparky, even Kali (though I wouldn’t recommend Kali as a primary desktop personally). Some based on Sid, some based on Testing.
The last paragraph is vital. Grab a flatpak of any software you need to be more up to date. Flatpaks running on Debian are amazing. Current software running on a stable base.
Mozilla even has a repository for installing the latest version through apt if you don’t want to use flatpack or snap, it’s pretty painless. Link
OP when they try Debian and it’s exactly what it advertises itself as:
My bank used to complain that my browser was out of date. I wrote an email to customer service explaining to them that:
A) debian’s “out of date” browser actually includes all up to date security patches. B) simply reading the browser agent isnt really security. I had simply been spoofing my browser agent to get around their silly browser “security” policy
They removed the browser check 2 weeks later. Not sure if it was because of me
simply reading the browser agent isnt really security
It’s not for their security, but for that of genuinely clueless people that are just running an actually outdated browser that might have known and exploitable security flaws.
It is not about security at all. They do not want to test or support old browsers. So, they set a minimum version and tell you that you need to upgrade to that.
If they only support one browser, it is going to be Chrome. Chrome has more zero-day vulnerabilities than any other project I can think of. It is not about security.
How do you know this? Of course there are lots of reasons for why they’d want to enforce minimum browser versions. But security might very well be one of them. Especially if you’re a bank you probably feel bad about sending session tokens to a browser that potentially has known security vulnerabilities.
And sure, the user agent isn’t a sure way to tell whether a browser is outdated, but in 95% of cases it’s good enough, and people that know enough to understand the block shouldn’t apply to them can bypass it easily anyway.
Yeah if it were about security they’d check the version of HTTPS, SSL, TLS and all that stuff.
Doing that would tell you nothing about whether the browser might have un-patched, known vulnerabilities elsewhere.
The hero we need rn tbh
Debian is working as intended. You are wanting to use Ubuntu or Mint if you want more up to date packages.
If the user really wants a new browser, Flatpak is always an option.
They also have a .deb you can manually update as well.
They can just use Flatpak as it will be the newest outside of Arch. Alternatively they could run Distrobox with something like Fedora.
I stopped using flatpak when I found out both I had to update outside of the package manager. Also using flatpak gave me some issues with my sound card, so I just run the .deb. To each their own though, which is why I love Linux.
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
Installing outside packages is generally not a good idea. You can use Distrobox with a upstream distro like Fedora or you can use Debian Back ports.
Had forgotten about backports. Need to get that set back up. Thank you for the reminder.
It is fairly easy to use
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Again, not arguing against, just why I don’t…. You do you, I’m just talking about me. Just cause I don’t use something for some reason doesn’t make me anti that thing. Linux community can be so volatile sometimes
fair, that i heard so much shit about people hating flatpak when it can be very helpful for newcomers that it got to my head, sorry
It can be tough through words to understand intent sometimes, and I to write sarcastic and dry, so no problem.
Flatpak is helpful, it’s how I ran several programs before my work forced me to windows, it does have its place in the toolbox.
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Ehm… im using debian stable, no website is telling me to update Firefox (I’m on deb 10, 11 and 12 in different PCs).
Deb 12, my home computer, is on unstable and running smoothly.
Debian isn’t “just works” but “it’s a freaking rock” + “open source hardcore philosophy”.
Maybe I got lucky?
For me, the outdated packages in stable have actually gotten better over time, as DEs get closer to a place where I don’t need any major updates to enjoy using them, Flatpaks become more readily available, and on a subjective level, I get less and less invested in current Linux news. Before Debian became my “forever distro”, I’d hopped to it a few times, and often found myself wishing for a newer piece of software that wasn’t in backports or flathub, or simply being bored with how stable it is, but that’s been happening less and less. And I feel like Debian 12 in particular left me with software that I wouldn’t mind being stuck with for two years.
I’ve gotten warnings to upgrade my browser with Debian’s Firefox ESR, but they never affected a website’s usability in a way that a newer version would fix, and they do provide security updates and new ESR series when they come out; even if you must have the newest Firefox, you can use the Flatpak.
Additionally, I’m currently on testing in order to get better support for my GPU, and each time I’ve tried to use it, it’s worked for me for a longer time than the last as I get better at resolving or avoiding broken packages. If you do experience issues like the one you described, and can replicate them, and no one else has already reported them, you should report them to Debian’s bug tracker. The whole point of Testing is to find and squash all the critical bugs before the next stable releases.
You must not be using an Nvidia GPU on Wayland because KDE is pushing updates for this use case
I’m using an AMD Ryzen iGPU on Wayland. I switched to Testing because the support already existed, but the kernel and mesa versions in stable were buggy for my particular GPU and I didn’t want to make a FrankenDebian.
I use NixOS Unstable btw
Debian Stable ± Flatpak gets best of both worlds
I use debian headless as a server never had any issues but then again pretty much any linux system is gonna be a decent server since everything is containerised now.
These days I care a lot less that a package is outdated than I do it being unstable personally. If security concerns are getting patched and it is still doing what I want it to do, I couldn’t care less about UI elements getting moved around just to make some PM happy.
Stable is for servers, unstable for desktop. It has worked for 20 years. I actually installed two further Debian workstations recently after trying and failing with Kubuntu. So … no, I don’t have this problem.
No idea why busybox is needed. Is this is your emergency boot environment like initramfs? Sometimes it’s nice that Linux boots up and offers an environment to fix stuff while some modules are broken.
Busybox is used in the initramfs normally. It’s the shell used by any scripts in that early stage, as well as the fallback shell environment.
No idea why busybox is needed. Is this is your emergency boot environment like initramfs?
I cannot for the life of me find the particular fix I followed, but I swear it was a missing symlink to busybox. Not in initramfs, but in the full booted environment. That’s why I was so confused haha. I can’t find anything about it right now, so maybe I’m misremembering something…
It got better, that’s what happened. You’re using Firefox ESR, it’s not unsafe.
Mozilla also provides a Deb repo for Debian and its derivatives: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w_install-firefox-deb-package-for-debian-based-distributions
Yeah and Flatpaks also exist.
Flatpaks are probably the best generic solution for using an LTS release like Debian Stable on a desktop system. You get the best of both worlds: up to date desktop packages and a stable base.
You can install Firefox from Mozilla’s own repository. It is a luxury to have in Debian a Mozilla repository to install Firefox.
Debian’s Firefox is Firefox ESR, or Extended Support Release. It’s behind the bleeding edge, but gets security updates.
If you want the bleeding edge Firefox, you can add Mozilla’s own APT repository and install it. Doesn’t even conflict with Debian (
firefox-esrvsfirefox, it even uses a separate user profile by default). Instructions are on the Firefox download page somewhere.Bleeding edge? Isn’t that just called stable?
Also, Flatpak
As everybody else has said, Debian is working as intended. To respond to the actual post though, Debian is working exactly as it always has.
If you think Debian used to be good, you must really love it now. It is better than ever.
Unlike in the past, the primary drawback of Debian Stable ( old package versions ) has multiple viable solutions. Other have rightly pointed out things like the Mozilla APT package and Flatpaks. Great solutions.
My favourite solution is to install Arch via Distrobox. You can then get all the stability of Debian everywhere you need it and, anytime you need additional packages or newer packages, you can install them in the Arch distrobox. Firefox is a prime candidate. You are not going to get newer packages or a greater section than via he Arch repos / AUR ( queue Nix rebuttals ).
