Desktop Firefox in Your Pocket with the Librem 5

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David Hamner

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Desktop Firefox is making its way over to the Librem 5 – the power of a full desktop browser in your pocket. For now, you’ll need to edit the .desktop file after installing, but that will be fixed in a future update.

sudo apt install firefox-esr
cp /usr/share/applications/firefox-esr.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
nano ~/.local/share/applications/firefox-esr.desktop

The desktop file needs the Exec line modified to look like:

Exec=env MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr --no-remote %u

The first part tells Firefox to use the Wayland display stack instead of X11, which has fullscreen support with keyboard input. Finally --no-remote is a workaround to a Firefox bug, which has already been fixed and will find its way into Debian, as well as the PureOS and the Librem 5 soon.

The default browser Gnome Web offers a much better UI for mobile screens. It makes accessing settings or using swipe gestures to navigate pages feel at home on a smartphone. If the first load of a web page is slow on Gnome Web, this is due to a bug, which the team is addressing – see the issue for an interim work around.

The Librem 5 already has two great web browsers with more in the PureOS store still to be explored. If you wanted you can even remove the default – unlike on Android and iOS. With the Librem 5 you have complete control over your phone and its software.

Discover the Librem 5

Purism believes building the Librem 5 is just one step on the road to launching a digital rights movement, where we—the-people stand up for our digital rights, where we place the control of your data and your family’s data back where it belongs: in your own hands.

Preorder now