Mozilla Firefox 38.0 released, available for Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite, Debian, Robolinux, SparkyLinux, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Arch Linux, Manjaro, ROSA Desktop etc.

Mozilla Firefox 38.0 released, available for Ubuntu 15.04 vivid Vervet, ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr (LTS), Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite, Debian, Robolinux, SparkyLinux, Fedora 22, Fedora 21, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Arch Linux, Manjaro, ROSA Desktop etc.

The Mozilla Firefox project is a redesign of Mozilla's browser component, written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform, supporting Linux, Android, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. It is a fast, small and very easy-to-use web browser/navigator/explorer that offers many advantages over other similar products, such as the ability to block pop-up windows and the feature-rich tabbed browsing experience.

Features at a glance

The application offers a well designed graphical user interface that integrates search (powered by Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), and industry leading accessibility with Find As You Type - find links and page text by simply typing. As mentioned before, the Firefox browser features comprehensive pop-up controls, which will keep unwanted advertising off your desktop. A tab browsing mode will let you open several pages in a single window, allowing you to load links in the background without leaving the page you're on.

What's new in Mozilla Firefox 38.0:

• New tab-based preferences
• Ruby annotation support
• Share the active tab or window in a Hello conversation - enabled for first half of the beta cycle
• Keep track of articles and blog posts with the Reading List - enabled for the first half of the beta cycle
• Base for the next ESR release.
• autocomplete=off is no longer supported for username/password fields
• RegExp.prototype.source now returns "(?:)" instead of the empty string for empty regular expressions
• Page load times improved by speculative connection warmup
• WebSocket now available in Web Workers
• Implemented srcset attribute and element for responsive images
• Implemented DOM3 Events KeyboardEvent.code
• Mac OS X: Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube
• BroadcastChannel API implemented
• Implemented Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) API to support encrypted HTML5 video/audio playback (Windows Vista or later only)
• Automatically download Adobe Primetime Content Decryption Module (CDM) for DRM playback through EME (Windows Vista or later only)
• Optimized-out variables are now visible in Debugger UI
• XMLHttpRequest logs in the web console are now visually labelled and can be filtered separately from regular network requests
• WebRTC now has multistream and renegotiation support
• copy command added to console

Installation instructions:

Mozilla does not provide a repository for its Firefox browser, but the installation steps are quite easy anyway and should not create difficulties on any Linux distribution.

The latest versions of Firefox are available as pre-compiled libraries via the Mozilla FTP, so we need to download the archive (i386 or i686 for 32 bit systems and amd64 or x86_64 for 64 bit systems), extract  it and run the firefox file. Also, it is advised to remove previous versions of Firefox, move Firefox to /opt and create a symlink, for an easier usage.

The below instructions should work on all the popular Linux systems, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite, Debian, Robolinux, SparkyLinux, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Arch Linux, Manjaro, ROSA Desktop etc.
How to install Firefox 38 on 32 bit Linux systems:

$ wget ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/38.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-38.0.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf firefox-38.0.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox*
$ sudo mv firefox /opt/firefox
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

To start Firefox, just open a terminal, type firefox and hit enter.
How to install Firefox 38 on 64 bit Linux systems:

$ wget ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/38.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-38.0.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf firefox-38.0.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/firefox*
$ sudo mv firefox /opt/firefox
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

For update on Ubuntu 15.04 vivid Vervet, ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr (LTS), Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite and other Ubuntu derivative systems, open a new Terminal window and bash (get it?) in the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

To start Firefox, just open a terminal, type firefox and hit enter.