This article is intended for IT administrators who wish to set up Firefox on the computers within their organization.
On both ESR and rapid release channels we offer Firefox builds for both 32 and 64 bit CPU architecture. We recommend using Firefox 64 bit builds in compatible environments although system administrators should select the CPU architecture that best matches their constraints. In any case, migrating from 32 bit Firefox to 64 bit Firefox should be done after significant QA cycles.
Desktop compatibility
| Firefox 32 bit | Firefox 64 bit | |
|---|---|---|
| 32 bit OS | Supported | Not supported |
| 64 bit OS | Supported | Supported |
| Systems with more than 2 GB RAM | Supported | Supported |
| Systems with 2 GB RAM or less | Supported | Supported but not recommended (lower performance) |
Benefits and limitations of 64 bit Firefox
| Firefox 32 bit | Firefox 64 bit | |
|---|---|---|
| Lower crash rates | No | Yes (we observed a crash rate reduction in the order of 50% to 60% after migrating release channel users to 64 bit Firefox) |
| Higher security (ASLR) | No | Yes |
| 32 bit only extensions | Yes | No (vendors may have 64 bit compatible extensions though) |
Citrix XenApp users willing to use 64 bit Firefox, see 64-bit Firefox crashes with Citrix's XenApp VM.
