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I received notice from my IT department to update Firefox and Thunderbird due to security issues. I thought it would be as easy as going clicking something like "Search for updates" in the menu, but I couldn't find such an option. I ran sudo apt update and then sudo apt upgrade because I think that is how all installed software is usually updated.

However, these are the version numbers of my Firefox and Thunderbird installations as listed in the settings:

firefox version

thunderbird version

Though if I download Firefox directly here, I get version 88 at the time of writing this. Thunderbird's newest version is 78.10. Thanks to the question linked in the comments, I understand that for various reasons, the Ubuntu upgrade command does not necessarily install the newest stable versions of any software. Is there another route?

smcs
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1 Answers1

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As already commented, the versions of both Firefox and Thunderbird are up-to-date in any standard and fully updated Ubuntu 20.04 installation. Such request from your IT department seems overzealous and misinformed regarding the security issues in the real world.

There are many reason why LTS releases don't have the latest versions of the included software but web browsers are the exception and are always kept up-to-date with minimal delay.

The above notwithstanding there are ways of running newer versions of both in Ubuntu 20.04.

FIREFOX:

Ad the PPA for "Firefox-Next".

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

This will update Firefox to the version being tested. At the time of this writing it'll update Firefox to version 89.xx.

THUNDERBIRD:

Unfortunately the same method can't be used for Thunderbird because the equivalent PPA is only for older releases and hasn't seen an update since 2018. However, newer Thunderbird versions do exist in additional Ubuntu repositories (-proposed shouldn't usually be enabled). There are reasons for holding back some newer Thunderbird versions, discussed in this Q&A.

An alternative to both Firefox and Thunderbird is to use the Mozilla Security PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
ChanganAuto
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