Running multiple Firefox with different versions in Linux

Previously, in my post of the other blog, I mentioned that I have to use command-line to run multiple Firefox with different versions. Now, I found an easy solution to solve this problem. Please note that, running different version of Firefox should using different profile, just to avoid downgrading and upgrading the profile based on the Firefox version.

Assuming we installed Firefox Nightly version,

  1. Firstly, using the command-line to create a new profile using ProfileManager,

    [code]firefox-nightly –no-remote -ProfileManager[/code]

  2. Then create a profile, such as “Nightly” as the profile name. After creating this profile, we can exit the Profile Manager.

  3. Make sure that we did not change our default profile, that means running “firefox” or “firefox-nightly” will use “xxxxxxxx.default” profile. This also means that whenever we run Firefox, the “xxxxxxxx.default” profile will be used.

  4. To run the Firefox Nightly version without entering the command-line “firefox-nightly –no-remote -P Nightly”, we can create the “desktop” file to the ~/.local. We can do this by copying the installed “desktop” file, such as

    [code]cp /usr/share/applications/firefox-nightly.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/[/code]

    This will copy the firefox-nightly.desktop to the ~/.local/share/applications/ and override the default “desktop” file.

  5. Edit the ~/.local/share/applications/firefox-nightly.desktop, at the Exec key, change it to

    [code]Exec=firefox-nightly –no-remote -P Nightly %u[/code]

    This will result that when we launch the Firefox Nightly from the Applications Menu, the “Nightly” profile will be used instead. As a result, we need not to use the command-line to run the instance with different profile.

Now, you can enjoy Firefox with Nightly, Aurora, Beta, or any other Firefox versions in one OS.