UsingFirefox
Installation
As of the writing of this document, Firefox is in dports as www/firefox.
Binary package
As root:
# pkg install firefox
Building from source
A Dports checkout/tarball is needed for this, usually you can get it easily by following the instructions in /usr/Makefile:
# cd /usr
# make help
To install:
# cd /usr/dports/www/firefox
# make BATCH=yes install clean
You can also use synth to install it:
# cd ~
# synth install www/firefox
Configuration
Always check what the pkg-message of the package says. It will give some recommendations for the setup.
# pkg info -D firefox
For Firefox specifically bear in mind that IPC in FreeBSD works differently as it works in DragonFly BSD.
Security
Besides the usual recommendations for web browsing security, we've created also a way of setting up Chromium to minimize the risks of exposure to certain vulnerabilities (Spectre, Meltdown) among other things. Please see: RunSecureBrowser Similar guidelines could be applied to any other browser although they may not have the same security mechanisms Chromium has.
Known issues
Please list down all the problems there might be with this browser below.
BugURL | Description | Workaround | Status |
---|---|---|---|
None | Slow page rendering and/or slow typing in web pages' textboxes. | In about:config set browser.tabs.remote.autostart=false | Unresolved |
None | Random crashes, SIGILL, SIGSEGV. No debug symbols possible in the binary yet | None | Unresolved |
None | Compressed pages are not rendered properly (binary displayed as text) | In about:config, empty network.http.accept-encoding and network.http.accept-encoding.secure variables | Unresolved |