The following procedure was tested with Firefox 120.0.1 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS running the default Gnome desktop.
For Linux desktops (and laptops) I install Firefox to /opt/firefox by downloading and extracting the latest binary package from Mozilla to /opt/firefox (tar xjf firefox-120.0.1.tar.bz2; sudo mv firefox /opt/; chown -R root:staff /opt/firefox). Once extracted, I make a symlink from /opt/firefox/firefox to /usr/local/bin/firefox. I then create a file for the desktop shortcut:
/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Firefox Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer
Exec=firefox %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
After installation, I usually make the following changes in the browser's Settings:
- Make Firefox the default browser
- Import Browser Data: bookmarks only (usually from an HTML bookmarks backup)
- Replace your existing user.js with that from "Betterfox" [1]
- Website appearance: Dark
- Home: set a custom URL as the homepage, set new tabs to Blank Page
- Firefox Home Content: uncheck all
- Search: set Default Search Engine to DuckDuckGo
- DNS over HTTPS: If desktop at home, turn Off to use system DNS resolver(s), if a laptop set to "Default Protection"
- Sync: set up sync for bookmarks only and turn on
- Themes: Dark
- Install extensions: uBlock Origin, Bitwarden
[1] "Betterfox" provides a consistent approach to improving Firefox privacy and performance via a customized user.js file. Yokoffing. Betterfox [Software]. GitHub, https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox.