ChromeOS | Linux Development Environment | Install Firefox onto a Chromebook

Note: If you’re using a school or work Chromebook. Your IT department might have disabled Linux Development Environment. So, before you try to use LDE, it’s best to reach out to your system administrator or tech support.

• Open the Linux Development Environment menu.
• From within the menu select Penguin to open a Linux Terminal windows.
• First we are going to check for update by typing:

sudo apt update

• Since we didn’t have any updates, we didn’t need to do an update. But if you want to update the apps and services in your Linux instance, you can type this:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

• When we are once again presented with the command prompt we can install Firefox.

Note: To make installing Linux apps a breeze. We can use a handy tool called Flatpak. So before you dive into the commands, make sure you’ve installed Flatpak on your instance of Linux. Check out our guide on Installing Flatpak into ChromeOS.- ChromeOS |Linux Development Environment | Install Fatpak onto a Chromebook.

• At the command prompt type:

sudo flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox

• When prompted to “Proceed with these Changes to the system installation?“, type Y.
• Firefox will now install onto your Chromebook.
• When you once again see a command prompt you can exit out of the terminal window by typing:

exit

• We can now try and run the Firefox application. 
• In the ChromeOS app Launcher, you will a folder called Linux apps which will contain any Linux applications you have installed onto your Chromebook. You should find the icon for Firefox here. 

Note: Just a heads up, since most budget-friendly Chromebooks use eMMC drives instead of SSDs, you might notice that the Firefox app takes a bit longer to load. This isn’t a problem with Firefox itself, but rather a limitation of your specific Chromebook model.

• Mydoodads article – How to install Linux Development Environment onto a Google Chromebook.
• Mydoodads article – ChromeOS | Linux Development Environment | Create a shared folder for Linux and ChromeOS.
• Mydoodads article – ChromeOS | Linux Development Environment | Install Flatpak onto a Chromebook.
• Mydoodads article – How to uninstall an application form Linux Development Environment.
• Mydoodads article – ChromeOS | Linux Development Environment | How to update a single application in Flatpak.

• Google support article – Setup Linux on your Chromebook.
• Wikipedia – Virtual Machine.
• Mozilla website – Firefox.