Install LibreWolf on Debian Based Distros

LibreWolf is a custom verson of Firefox, with a focus on privacy and security. I thought this would be appropriate to look into after a recent video posted by Lunduke.

Steps

Run the following BASH script to install Librewolf on your distro. It is based on the one I found on the official docs, but I changed it so that it stops if your distro was not one that it is expecting/supports, rather than just falling back to as if y ou were running Ubuntu 20.04 (focal).

#!/bin/bash

# stop on any failure
set -e

# install packages required for setting up the repository
sudo apt update \
  && sudo apt install -y wget gnupg lsb-release apt-transport-https ca-certificates

# Check to make sure that the user's distribution is what we expect before proceeding.
DISTRO=$(lsb_release -sc)
SUPPORTED_DISTROS=("una" "bookworm" "vanessa" "jammy" "focal" "bullseye" "vera" "uma")

if [[ ! " ${SUPPORTED_DISTROS[*]} " =~ [[:space:]]${DISTRO}[[:space:]] ]]; then
    echo "Your distribution '$DISTRO' doesn't match one this installation script is expecting."
    exit
fi

# Download and trust the public key of the librewolf project so we trust the repositories packages
wget -O- https://deb.librewolf.net/keyring.gpg \
    | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/librewolf.gpg

# Configure the repository
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources << EOF > /dev/null
Types: deb
URIs: https://deb.librewolf.net
Suites: $DISTRO
Components: main
Architectures: amd64
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/librewolf.gpg
EOF

# Finally, install librewolf
sudo apt update \
  && sudo apt install librewolf -y

Things To Know

• Librewolf blocks cookies by default. If you want a site to remember you so you don't have to keep logging in, you will need to whitelist their ability to set cookies.
• Librewolf takes steps to hide your identity and prevent you being "fingerprinted", thus:
  • Popup windows such as for passbolt plugin login will appear in random sizes which can be annoying.
  • Your user agent will appear as a stock windows user, so Google may alert you that someone using Windows loggedin, when actually you logged in using Linux on Librewolf.