CPUs older than Pentium 4 and AMD Opteron not supported

Apr 19, 2017 21:45 GMT  ·  By

The Firefox 53.0 web browser was made available for download earlier today for all supported platforms, and an official announcement was published by the Mozilla folks a few moments ago with details about the new features.

As revealed already, most of the new changes implemented in Mozilla Firefox 53.0 are related to the Windows platform, including the improved graphics stability by using the Quantum Compositor in a separate process, which should reduce browser crashes by approximately 10 percent.

But Linux users should know that, starting with this version, Firefox can no longer be installed on computers powered by older processors than Pentium 4 and AMD Opteron. It's something worth mentioning here because some users out there run various lightweight GNU/Linux distributions designed to bring old PCs to life. It is recommended to use Firefox 52 ESR as it will be supported until spring 2018.

Firefox 53.0 debuts with two new compact themes

Another feature shipping with Mozilla Firefox 53.0 that would also benefit Linux users is the implementation of two new compact themes based on the Firefox Developer Edition theme. They are Compact Light and Compact Dark, and can be enabled from the Appearance panel in the Add-ons tab.

Check out the full release notes and Mozilla developer's latest blog announcement to learn more about what's new in Firefox 53.0, which you can download for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now from our website, and we recommend that you update as soon as possible.

However, if you don't usually use the binaries provided by Mozilla to run Firefox on your favorite GNU/Linux distro, it would take up to a couple of days or more before Firefox 53.0 will be available in the stable repositories so you can update from Firefox 52.0. Mozilla also released today Firefox 52.1.0 ESR for all supported OSes.

New Dark and Light compact themes
New Dark and Light compact themes

Firefox 53.0 (2 Images)

Firefox 53.0 on Ubuntu 17.04
New Dark and Light compact themes
Open gallery