For those utilizing Linux on a 64-bit ARM device and hoping to use Firefox Nightly builds, there’s great news – Mozilla has now made ARM64 Linux builds available for download.
As far as my knowledge goes, the majority of Linux distributions that cater to ARM64/AArch64 offer a native ARM version of Firefox in their repos (in the case of Ubuntu this is via snap). However, some Linux ARM distros only provide Firefox ESR, which is a long-term support version that does not include the latest features.
Previously, it’s not been possible to download Firefox for ARM64 directly from Mozilla.
That is now changing.
Mozilla has introduced an APT repository, offering Debian users .DEB versions of Firefox. This release received feedback from the Linux ARM community, with requests for ARM64 builds to be included.
In response, Mozilla has included Firefox Nightly for ARM in the Mozilla APT repository.
To accommodate non-Debian Linux distros users, a Firefox Nightly binary for ARM64, compressed into a .tar.bz2 archive, is also available for direct download. This also benefits users who prefer not to set up the Mozilla APT repository.
While it is generally understood that nightly builds of any software are potentially unstable, this exceptionally applies to the newly launched Firefox Nightly ARM64 builds.
Mozilla says cautions that it is “still incorporating comprehensive ARM64 testing into Firefox’s continuous integration and release pipeline” so ARM builds are not as robustly tested as its more familiar 64-bit Intel/AMD ones.
There is good news, though. Mozilla says its eventual “…goal is to integrate ARM64 builds into Firefox’s extensive automated test suite, which will enable us to offer this architecture across the beta, release, and ESR channels.”
While those builds are perhaps a little overdue — Chromium’s Linux ARM support is robust at this point — it’s nonetheless welcome.