Firefox 136 is available for TUXEDO OS - TUXEDO Computers

This week, Mozilla released Firefox 136, and of course, we immediately responded by providing the new release in TUXEDO OS. The new version of the Mozilla browser includes so many significant updates that it’s worth sharing a dedicated news article.

Firefox 136 introduces two major features that users have been waiting for. First, it now offers the option to display the tab bar vertically, saving space. Second, Firefox finally supports hardware decoding for AMD graphics cards under Linux.

Vertical Tab Bar

The most significant new feature in Firefox 136 is the long-requested vertical tab bar. When you click on an empty space in the horizontal tab bar in the new Firefox, a context menu will appear at the bottom with the entry Enable Vertical Tabs, which moves the tab bar to the left side of the browser. To return to the horizontal tab bar, simply select Disable Vertical Tabs.

By default, the bar is narrow and shows only the favicon of a tab. Clicking the icon in the title bar expands the sidebar, making the tab bar wider and adding the title of the website. You can also achieve this with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+Z. With the mouse, you can resize the bar by dragging the separator line to the right.

Overhauled Sidebar

While we’re on the topic of the sidebar: It has also been revamped, now providing easier access to the chatbot, bookmarks, browsing history, and tabs from other devices. You can customize which of these components are displayed according to your preferences.

Hardware Decoding for AMD Graphics Cards

Firefox 136 reaches an important milestone: hardware video decoding for AMD GPUs under Linux is now activated by default through the VA-API interface. Mozilla had hesitated for a long time to ensure that the open-source video decoding stack for AMD GPUs was reliable enough to enable this feature. This reduces the load on the CPU when playing high-resolution videos.

Additional Improvements

In addition to these two major updates, Firefox 136 offers more features. For example, Mozilla now actively implements the HTTPS-First Mode, which users previously had to enable manually in the settings. Firefox now enforces HTTPS by default, falling back to HTTP only if HTTPS is unavailable. Additionally, under Clear Browsing Data and Cookies, it is now possible to delete saved form data separately from the browsing history, cache, and cookies.

Last but not least, Firefox is now available for the AArch64 (ARM64) CPU architecture under Linux, bringing it in line with Windows and macOS. This version can be downloaded as a Debian package from Mozilla’s APT repository or as a .tar.bz2 archive from Mozilla’s download page. Flatpak support is already in the works.

As usual, Mozilla has fixed several security vulnerabilities. For more details on the release, check out the official Release Notes. You can install Firefox 136 in TUXEDO OS via a manual upgrade in Discover or through the terminal.