How To Install Firefox ESR on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Firefox ESR on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Firefox ESR (Firefox Extended Support Release) is an official version of Firefox for the enterprise. It comes with the latest security and stability fixes but not with the latest features. This ESR Firefox builds are intended for organizations like universities, governments, businesses, and much more.

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 Firefox ESR browser on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• 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 ESR on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Install Firefox ESR from the Mozilla PPA repository.

By default, Firefox ESR is not available on Ubuntu 20.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to add the Mozilla PPA repository to your Ubuntu system:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa

Then, run the following command to install the Firefox ESR packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install firefox-esr

• Install Firefox ESR using Snap.

If Snapd package manager is not already installed then you can install it by running the following command below:

sudo apt install snapd

sudo snap install firefox --channel=esr/stable

Step 3. Accessing Firefox ESR on Ubuntu Linux.

Once successfully installed, run the following path on your desktop to open the path: Activities -> Show Applications -> Firefox or launching it through the terminal with the command shown below:

firefox

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Firefox. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) web browser on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Mozilla website.