Edit: Due to the fact that this article is old, the installation instructions may not work anymore. In order to successfully install the latest version of Palemoon, please access the palemoon tag and open the latest article (the one on top).
The latest installation instructions for Palemoon
Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Pale Moon is an open-source, cross-platform browser based on Mozilla Firefox, being up to 25% faster then the original.
Also worth mentioning, due to the fact that Pale Moon is not affiliated to Mozilla, it will not adopt the Australis interface, keeping an UI inspired by the classical Firefox interface. Also, the support for DRM will not be added by default, the users having the possibility to enable it, via third party plugins.
The latest version available is Pale Moon 24.6.2, which has been recently released, coming only with a bunch of fixes and improvements:
- Automate rendering back-end selection and use cairo as appropriate.
This should fix start-up problems on all types of graphics cards regardless of vendor. - Fix font subpixel rendering in menus when on cairo backend (D2D off)
- Cairo: Prevent falling back to padding when not strictly needed.
Performance regression fix if D2D isn’t used. - Azure: Use correct device offsets.
- Prevent crashes due to the allocation of source surfaces to errored surfaces
This prevents some miscellaneous browser crashes occurring with cairo on azure.
In this article I will show you how to install Pale Moon 24.6.2 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS, LXLE, Peppermint, Deepin, Linux Lite, Debian, Kwheezy, Crunchbang, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva and Arch Linux.
Because Pale Moon 24.6.2 is not available via any repository yet, we have to download Pale Moon from the project’s site, extract the archive, move to /opt and alias the launcher.
Follow the instructions for your system’s architecture exactly, in order to get a successful installation.
How to install Pale moon 24.6.2 on 32 bit Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS, LXLE, Peppermint, Deepin, Linux Lite, Debian, Kwheezy, Crunchbang, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva and Arch Linux:
$ wget sourceforge.net/projects/pm4linux/files/24.6.2/palemoon-24.6.2.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf palemoon-24.6.2.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/palemoon*
$ sudo mv palemoon /opt/palemoon24.6.2
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/palemoon24.6.2/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon
Next, to start the Pale Moon browser, type palemoon in your terminal.
How to install Pale moon 24.6.2 on 64 bit Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pinguy OS, LXLE, Peppermint, Deepin, Linux Lite, Debian, Kwheezy, Crunchbang, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva and Arch Linux:
$ wget sourceforge.net/projects/pm4linux/files/24.6.2/palemoon-24.6.2.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf palemoon-24.6.2.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/palemoon*
$ sudo mv palemoon /opt/palemoon24.6.2
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/palemoon24.6.2/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon
Next, to start the Pale Moon browser, type palemoon in your terminal.
How to import your Firefox profile (bookmarks, history, extensions, etc) on Pale Moon:
There are a lot of extensions capable of doing this, but I prefer the good old fashioned way: copy the profile manual, from Firefox to Pale Moon:
$ cp -R ~/.mozilla/firefox/* ~/.moonchild\ productions/pale\ moon/
Also worth mentioning, due to the fact that Pale Moon is not based on the latest Firefox version, but on Firefox ESR, some extensions may not work on Pale Moon.