London, UK, 19 March 2018: Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, today announced that Mozilla has launched a Firefox snap bringing their latest Quantum browser to multiple Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. Developed by Canonical, snaps are a universal application packaging format for Linux, allowing them to work natively on hundreds of different platforms and multiple distributions.

By launching as a snap, the Firefox Quantum browser is available to an increased amount of Linux users with the snap working natively on Ubuntu, Arch, Linux Mint, Fedora, Solus, Debian and other Linux distributions that support snaps.

“Mozilla has long been a leader in the open source space,” said Jamie Bennett, VP of Engineering, Devices & IoT at Canonical. “As such we are very happy to announce that they are joining the community of applications already available as snaps. Through their unique format, snaps can help bring some of the world’s most popular apps to almost any Linux desktop, server, device or cloud machine, allowing users to select the right distro for them without having to worry about updates, security or compatibility issues further down the line.”

Users who download the new Firefox snap will be able to benefit from testing the latest browser features by using Canonical’s channel system. By accessing the beta or edge channels, users can discover upcoming features and new versions before full release while still keeping the existing stable version of the snap on their device in parallel for their everyday needs.

Snaps are containerised software packages, designed to work securely within any Linux environment across desktop, the cloud and IoT devices. Thousands of snaps have been launched since 2016, with its appeal coming from the automatic updates and roll-back features, plus security benefits, allowing greater flexibility for developers on the one hand, and a more seamless experience for users on the other.

To install the new Firefox Quantum snap, please click here or to find out more about snaps visit https://snapcraft.io/store

ENDS

About Canonical

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading OS for cloud operations. Most public cloud workloads use Ubuntu, as do most new smart gateways, switches, self-driving cars and advanced robots. Canonical provides enterprise support and services for commercial users of Ubuntu.

Established in 2004, Canonical is a privately held company.

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