| Is there any way to update Firefox on Linux without resorting to ugly methods like running it as root and using update UI, or downloading the mar file manually and running the updater CLI tool with that file (as sudo / root)? The issue is that I use stock Mozilla build (I prefer it to Iceweasel on Debian), so I just placed it in /opt, but I don't want to give write permissions to the firefox directory to my primary user (it's kind of bad security wise). Because of no write permissions, updating UI can't update the browser naturally, unless I run it as root. And manual mar + updater method isn't nice either. Potentially there can be some better ways for updating: 1. Firefox can work with policykit and request authorization for updating (if user has it - it can ask for password). That's much better than running as root. 2. updater CLI tool can detect all the settings, channels sources and etc. from Firefox local DBs, and instead of forcing the user to manually grab some mar file, it can go and perform all that automatically. updater can be run with sudo still, but avoid all the manual steps. Both these methods would be much neater than what I usually do now. |
Also, running a browser (or anything as complex as a GUI app, but especially anything as wildly complex as a browser) as root is probably a bad idea security-wise anyway.