Refresh Firefox ESR

[debiandonder]

I tried various versions of Firefox and want to stick with the Firefox ESR.

The only problem is that the standard Firefox seems to be messing with the ESR version. I thought that the Firefox Stable profile got deleted when I uninstalled it.

It's easy to refresh the standard version but I don't now how to refresh or reset the ESR version.

[Bulkley]

I may be wrong here but I think they both use .mozilla (note the dot) in your user space. Try closing both browsers and renaming .mozilla. Whichever you choose to open first, Firefox or Firefox ESR should regenerate a new .mozilla. Personally, I try as much as possible to keep settings and bookmarks alike across my fleet of browsers.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I thought that the Firefox Stable profile got deleted when I uninstalled it.

The package manager will not touch files in ${HOME}, this is the expected bahaviour.

Remove ~/.mozilla, as Bulkley suggests.

[debiandonder]

Thank you so much, deleting the Firefox folder in ~/.mozilla did the trick.

Firefox ESR is working fine now and just as fast as the standard versions, with tracking protection enabled.

[Bulkley]

For future reference, when suspecting such as .mozilla the safe way to experiment is to rename it. Change it to something you immediately recognise like .mozilla.donder. By doing this you can reverse the process if the experiment is unproductive.

[CwF]

I'm curious, where are the 'about:config' changes saved to?

[debiandonder]

Yes, I am used to using the rapid release or standard Firefox, where you can refresh the browser when something starts acting up, I can't see any refresh option for the ESR version.

I also use Chromium debian version that's just a version or two behind the Chrome stable version.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

where are the 'about:config' changes saved to?

~/.mozilla/*.default/prefs.js

[CwF]

where are the 'about:config' changes saved to?

~/.mozilla/*.default/prefs.js

Thank you, good to know. So if one wipes their directory it might be good to save that file if it was worked on.

[debiandonder]

If you are using the standard version of Firefox and go to the Firefox website you see refresh Firefox and that resets everything to default.

[milomak]

or you can run firefox --profilemanager and specifically create folders for different profiles

run the same command to choose which profile you want to load

[debiandonder]

I have found that if I used Firefox stable or rapid release or whatever they call it and uninstall it and then try Firefox ESR, end up with both profiles. I went into the about:config settings and found under media.autoplay that I had the older versions option of true or false and also the newer versions 0, that can be changed to 1.

I is better to choose one version and stay with it. Firefox ESR or the Stable one with more new features.

I mostly use Chromium and just fall back on Firefox ESR when something doesn't work in Chromium, like some functions just work in Firefox on Facebook.

Does anyone know what's the default browser in Debian? I did a pick and choose install on the Debian based Q40S.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Does anyone know what's the default browser in Debian?

Seems to be firefox-esr, the default task-gnome-desktop has that as a recommendation:

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/task-gnome-desktop

[debiandonder]

Yes I think Debian 9 uses Firefox ESR, because it's open source.

A month ago I was using Firefox 64-bit snap version on Ubuntu 14.04 and it froze the whole system that nothing worked. That only happened once since I have been using Ubuntu since 2014.

Never happened with Chrome or Chromium though.