Firefox 121 It is now available as a new stable version of the Mozilla web browser, which this time does not come with many exciting new features, but with one that is quite important for Linux users, so let’s start with that.

The highlight of Mozilla Firefox 121 is that the Linux application build has Wayland support enabled by default, a graphics protocol that has been promising to replace the old Xorg for many years. This means that, at least on paper, Linux users running the system via a Wayland session no longer need to set the environment variable MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 activate native support. However, Snap packaging for Ubuntu still works on top of XWayland (Xorg on Wayland) in the 22.04 LTS distribution.

Mozilla warns that due to limitations of the protocol itself, native Wayland support requires tricks or extensions in KDE Plasma and GNOME to keep the Picture-in-Picture window on top of others. There is currently an open bug to fix the problem, but it seems that no significant progress has been made in the last two years.

Mozilla Firefox 121 for Linux (Flatpak) with Wayland support by default.

Transition to other operating systems, users Starting with this release, Windows will see a notification to install the Microsoft AV1 Video Extensionwhich provides hardware-accelerated playback of this format, while voice commands are now supported on macOS.

As features that have reached at least all users of desktop systems, Firefox 121 makes available a new option that allows you to forcibly underline all links on a web page, while the PDF editor includes a floating button to facilitate the removal of drawings, text. and images that have been added to the document.

For the developer-oriented parts, the debugger includes an option to disable the command keyword; on the current page and which can be found in checkbox marked as “Pause on debugger statement” in the “Breakpoints” section. It is checked by default to preserve the default behavior.

As a final point to emphasize, they are nineteen vulnerabilities that have been patchedwith one of them affecting Firefox itself 121. Vulnerabilities cover a large number of aspects of the browser and fixing them may not be new, but here is the curious CVE-2023-6857, which affected the resolution of symbolic links on Unix-based operating systems, so it affected Linux, macOS and Android, but not Windows.

Details about Mozilla Firefox 121 are available in the release notes, while the application can be obtained for Windows, macOS and Linux in the corresponding download section. If you have it installed, it can be forced to update via Main Menu > Help > “About Firefox”, although for Linux it’s logical to wait for it to arrive via the distribution’s repositories, Snap and/or Flathub (Flatpak). On Android, it is provided through the Google Play Store.