Firefox skeleton will download latest Firefox

As we have ongoing issues with SeaMonkey, not working properly on some sites, we need to be able to easily install Firefox, Chromium or Chrome browsers. I very much like the SM suite, so want to keep it builtin to EasyOS.

There are Firefox and Chromium SFS files, that can be downloaded via the "sfsget" icon on the desktop; however, I want a mechanism that is a single-click to install one of these browsers, and also a single-click (or a couple of clicks) to update to the latest version.

So, I have created a PET 'firefox-skel-ask', that is just a skeleton, with various configuration files for Firefox. Most importantly, it has an entry in the menu "Internet -> Download latest Firefox".

First time you run this, it will download the latest version of Firefox, which right now is 95.0.2, and will set it up to run as user "firefox". That is, it will run non-root, for enhanced security, and it's home will be /home/firefox

Once downloaded and setup, there will be a new menu entry "Internet -> Firefox web browser", and an icon can be created on the desktop by dragging /home/firefox/firefox onto the desktop.

Thereafter, you can run "Internet -> Download latest Firefox" to check if there is a later version. if there is, you will be offered the choice of upgrading.

There was a post on the Puppy Forum a couple of days ago, reporting that SM cannot login at wordpress.com. Yet another site to add to the list of incompatible sites! Very frustrating. The SM developers will be doing a major version jump, from 2.53.x to 2.57.x, but there are not many developers and we don't know when this happen.

In the meantime, there is now a simple mechanism to install and update Firefox.  

Tags: easy