Upgrade to Firefox 40 in Ubuntu 15.04, 14.04

Last updated: August 12, 2015

Firefox 38

Mozilla Firefox 40 was released yesterday and available for upgrade in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 repositories.

Release highlights according to the official release note:

  • Support for Windows 10
  • Added protection against unwanted software downloads
  • User can receive suggested tiles in the new tab page based on categories Firefox matches to browsing history (en-US only).
  • Hello allows adding a link to conversations to provide context on what the conversation will be about
  • New style for add-on manager based on the in-content preferences style
  • Improved scrolling, graphics, and video playback performance with off main thread compositing (GNU/Linux only)
  • Graphic blocklist mechanism improved: Firefox version ranges can be specified, limiting the number of devices blocked
  • Add-on extensions that are not signed by Mozilla will display a warning
  • NPAPI Plug-in performance improved via asynchronous initialization
  • Smoother animation and scrolling with hardware vsync (Windows only)
  • JPEG images use less memory when scaled and can be painted faster
  • Sub-resources can no longer request HTTP authentication, thus protecting users from inadvertently disclosing login data
  • IndexedDB transactions are now non-durable by default
  • Implemented AudioBufferSourceNode.detune to modulate playback rate in cents, a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals
  • Improved Performance tools in the developer tools: Waterfall view, Call Tree view and a Flame Chart view
  • New rules view tooltip in the Inspector to tweak CSS Filter values
  • Console API messages from SharedWorker and ServiceWorker are now displayed in web console
  • New page ruler highlighting tool that displays lightweight horizontal and vertical rules on a page
  • Inspector now searches across all content frames in a page
  • Fix that Kannada text does not display properly in built-in pdf viewer
  • security fixes.

How to upgrade:

The packages has been made into Ubuntu updates and security repositories. Just search for and launch Software Updater and install the updates after checking for updates:

upgrade-firefox40

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2 responses to Upgrade to Firefox 40 in Ubuntu 15.04, 14.04

  1. Hi Jim,

    Thanks for your post.
    I am very very new at Linux world. I saw many softwares I downloaded not opening. They include chrome, skype etc. What should I do?

    Have a nice day.

    Hasan

    • You may first try launching the programs in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), for example, run google-chrome in terminal to get the error.