Firefox can now be installed on Chromebooks and other devices running ChromeOS. This article will explain the system requirements needed in order to run Firefox on ChromeOS and how to set this up.

How to run Firefox on ChromeOS

To run Firefox on ChromeOS, you first need to ensure that your system meets the following requirements:

System Requirements

• x86 based Chromebook running ChromeOS 80 or later

You can check this by going to chrome://version in the Chrome browser address bar. Follow these instructions from Google if you need to upgrade your OS.

Enable Linux support for ChromeOS

• Visit this Google Support page to learn more about how to set up Linux (Beta) on your Chromebook.
• Once you've enabled Linux, check the Terminal to see if you have the correct version:

  cat /etc/os-release

• If the version is not 10 (buster) or above, you'll need to run the update script:

  sudo bash /opt/google/cros-containers/bin/upgrade_container

This script will take some time depending on how fast your Chromebook and internet speeds are. Once it's done, you'll need to restart your Linux container. You can either right-click the Terminal icon and select Shut down Linux (Beta) or just restart your Chromebook.

Install Firefox DEB package (recommended)

To install the DEB package through the APT repository, do the following:

1. Create a directory to store APT repository keys if it doesn't exist:

   sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings

2. Import the Mozilla APT repository signing key:

   wget -q https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -O- | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc > /dev/null

   If you do not have wget installed, you can install it with: sudo apt-get install wget

3. The fingerprint should be 35BAA0B33E9EB396F59CA838C0BA5CE6DC6315A3. You may check it with the following command:

   gpg -n -q --import --import-options import-show /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc | awk '/pub/{getline; gsub(/^ +| +$/,""); if($0 == "35BAA0B33E9EB396F59CA838C0BA5CE6DC6315A3") print "\nThe key fingerprint matches ("$0").\n"; else print "\nVerification failed: the fingerprint ("$0") does not match the expected one.\n"}'

4. Next, add the Mozilla APT repository to your sources.list:
   • For Debian 12 (Bookworm) and Older:

   echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc] https://packages.mozilla.org/apt mozilla main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list > /dev/null

   • For Debian 13 (Trixie) and Newer:

   sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.sources > /dev/null << EOF

   Types: deb

   URIs: https://packages.mozilla.org/apt

   Suites: mozilla

   Components: main

   Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc

   EOF

5. Configure APT to prioritize packages from the Mozilla repository:

   sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla > /dev/null << EOF

   Package: *

   Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org

   Pin-Priority: 1000

   EOF

6. Update your package list, and install firefox (or one of firefox-esr, -beta, -nightly, -devedition):

   sudo apt-get update

   sudo apt-get install firefox

Use different languages on Firefox DEB package

For those of you who would like to use Firefox in a different language than American English, we have also created DEB packages containing the Firefox language packs. To install a specific language pack, replace fr in the example below with the desired language code. In this example, we are installing the French language pack of Firefox.

sudo apt-get install firefox-l10n-fr

To list all the available language packs, you can use this command after adding the Mozilla repository and running sudo apt-get update:

apt-cache search firefox-l10n

Localization are also available as firefox-esr-l10n, -beta-l10n, -nightly-l10n, -devedition-l10n packages for other release/edition

Install from Flatpak

To install Firefox from Flatpak, install and configure Flatpak on your computer. Once Flatpak is installed, go to the Firefox Flathub's page, and click the Install button. Alternatively, you can type the following command in a terminal:

flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox

By default, Flatpak installs Firefox in the same locale as your operating system. To use a different language, please follow the instructions on how to use Firefox in another language.