Firefox

Firefox is a popular, open-source web browser.

Installation

To install Firefox, firstly enable the Community repository, then type in the terminal:

For the Extended Support Release (ESR) (firefox-esr):

# apk add firefox-esr

For the current release (firefox):

# apk add firefox

Alternatives

The Alpine packages do not disable most telemetry and similar tracking shipped by upstream. Consider using librewolf, a privacy-centric fork which disables Mozilla's first-party spyware and analytics:

# apk add librewolf

Stability

If tabs crash, then try disabling hardware acceleration, in the Preferences - Performance menu.

Notifications

For Firefox to use native notifications (e.g.: via a notification daemon) the libnotify package is required.

DRM content using Widevine workaround

As per #16783, to play DRM content using Widevine(i.e Spotify and other streaming websites) you will have to manually configure it up. Install the necessary packages:

# apk add gcompat patchelf

GMP sandbox needs to be disabled on launch:

$ MOZ_DISABLE_GMP_SANDBOX=1 firefox

Now open about:config and enable media.gmp-widevinecdm.enabled and media.gmp-widevinecdm.visible.

Open a DRM Stream test to load the plugin then patch the library:

$ patchelf --add-needed libgcompat.so.0 ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/gmp-widevinecdm/*/libwidevinecdm.so

Finally, reload the page and it should be working.

Once the above steps are carried out once, use the command $ MOZ_DISABLE_GMP_SANDBOX=1 firefox to launch Firefox whenever DRM content needs to played.

Warning: Use the command $ MOZ_DISABLE_GMP_SANDBOX=1 firefox only when playing content from trusted sites.

See Also

• Git repositories for Alpine Linux
• firefox: plug-and-play widevine support
• crash when trying to play widevine protected content