I’ve been using the Firefox mod Zen Browser on Linux Mint. When Firefox released an update in February, my Zen had it the next day. People depending on the “official” Firefox were left waiting over a week, with multiple threads in the forums asking “when is it coming?”
Zen: On one machine, Flatpak. On the other, AppImage through AM.
Firefox: Mint-maintained version from Mint repo (deb).
I can’t remember the exact differences between Firefox upstream and Mint version. But I believe Mint began maintaining their own deb at a time when upstream Ubuntu was only offering Firefox as a snap, which Mint is against, and Mozilla hadn’t yet begun offering their own deb repo.
I’ve been using the Firefox mod Zen Browser on Linux Mint. When Firefox released an update in February, my Zen had it the next day. People depending on the “official” Firefox were left waiting over a week, with multiple threads in the forums asking “when is it coming?”
Also when I looked into mods updates for a critical security fix in November, practically all the mods had updated within 24 hours of FF’s update. (Exceptions: Midori and Mercury.) https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2554267&sid=4f140800c5d62939af8e6394514b9aab#p2554267
Did Zen come from flatpak and Firefox from deb?
Zen: On one machine, Flatpak. On the other, AppImage through AM. Firefox: Mint-maintained version from Mint repo (deb).
I can’t remember the exact differences between Firefox upstream and Mint version. But I believe Mint began maintaining their own deb at a time when upstream Ubuntu was only offering Firefox as a snap, which Mint is against, and Mozilla hadn’t yet begun offering their own deb repo.
That’s where the delay comes. Though I guess it does point out that even with just Firefox the differences are small in how quickly you get updates.