How To Install Firefox on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Firefox on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is featured on nearly all Linux distributions as the primary browser or secondary.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Mozilla Firefox browser on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Firefox on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Firefox on Debian 11.

• Install Firefox using Apt default repository

By default, Firefox is available on Debian 11 base repository. Now run the following command below to install Firefox browser to your Debian system:

sudo apt install firefox

• Install Firefox from the official page.

Now we get the latest version of Firefox from the official page:

wget -O firefoxsetup.tar.bz2 "https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest&os=linux64&lang=en-US"

Next, extract the file and move it somewhere safe:

sudo tar -xf firefoxsetup.tar.bz2 --directory /opt

Then, we create Desktop and Application shortcuts:

nano ~/Desktop/firefox.desktop

Add the following file:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=FireFox-R
Comment=Browser
Exec=/opt/firefox/./firefox
Icon=/opt/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default64.png
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=false

Save and close the file, then create an Application launcher shortcut for the same:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/firefox.desktop /usr/share/applications/

Step 3. Accessing Firefox on Debian.

Once successfully installed, the Firefox browser application can be launched either from the command line by typing firefox or by clicking on its icon in the Applications menu.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Firefox. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox browser on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Firefox website.