Firefox 96 is scheduled to launch on January 11, 2022. new version of Mozilla’s browser for Windows, macOS, and Linux It should be reaching all users on the desktop today automatically.
If you don’t want to wait for what is the first release of the new year, you can always look for the package that has already been uploaded to Mozilla’s ftp servers. It is a version that includes several technical improvements to improve the experience in general, and that is accompanied by a special news for some linuxers.
The Firefox team explains that for this release there have been significant improvements to noise suppression and automatic gain control, as well as slight improvements to echo cancellation to give us a better overall experience.
They have also significantly reduced the load on the main thread, fixed an issue where WebRTC degraded the resolution of the shared screen, and others video quality degradation issues on some sites. In addition to this, Firefox will activate the cookie policy Same-Site=lax
by default to defend the user from CSRF attacks (Request Forgery) cross-site).
A better and more consistent Firefox for Linux Mint
Linux Mint users have received special news related to Firefox, as the distro has signed a new agreement with Mozilla to improve the browser so that it offers a more consistent experience with other operating systems.
Thanks to this, Firefox on Linux Mint will now perform relatively faster once it transitions to Firefox 96 between January 11-12. But besides this users can expect a few changes as a consequence of this new society:
The idea is that Firefox provides the same experience in Linux Mint as in other operating systems
The default homepage and search engine will become Mozilla’s and not Linux Mint’s.
Firefox will no longer include code changes or patches for Linux Mint, Debian, or Ubuntu.
The Linux Mint team will no longer have to build Firefox themselves using Ubuntu packages but will package the Mozilla version directly.
The Firefox icon will change to follow Mozilla’s usage guidelines.
Firefox 96 will offer better support for rounded corners in Firefox window decorations.
Linux Mint will cooperate with Mozilla on software updates in 2022, to make it easier for Firefox and the Update Manager to work together and so that users can see and apply updates directly from the browser itself.