Pale Moon forum

Beginning with the release of Pale Moon v28.0.0, Pale Moon's own internal updater will be enabled and working by default on Linux which will provide a much superior process for updating the browser than what the pminstaller is able to do. So with that said, the pminstaller tool is no longer maintained and will not work for installing or updating any version of Pale Moon 28+.

Please note that in order for the internal updater to work, the browser must be located in a user-writable location. If you previously used the pminstaller to install Pale Moon 27.x, then the browser is located in /opt which by default is not writable by a standard user account. In order to allow the internal updater to work with v28 (while leaving Pale Moon in /opt), you can perform the following steps:

1. Extract the Pale Moon 28 tarball (once released) to /opt, overriding the existing version there.
2. Run the following command from the terminal: sudo chown -R "$USER:$USER" "/opt/palemoon"

Alternatively you can also simply extract Pale Moon 28 to any user-writable location you'd like such as your Desktop or home directory, though do note that if you do this you will have to update the Pale Moon launcher in your application menu to point to the new location.

so it will function identically to Basilisk in the installing/updating department right? great change!

This is a bummer. I really enjoyed pminstaller

fillerup wrote:so it will function identically to Basilisk in the installing/updating department right?

Yes it will be the same functionality as Basilisk (and the current Pale Moon unstable channel).

fatboy wrote:This is a bummer.

Sorry. The pminstaller was originally hacked together as a short term help to people. It was never intended to be a long-term solution.

Trava, thanks for this notice
ref upgrade to PM28.
(I presently have
PM 27.9 in my Ubuntu Linux 14.04 32-bits).

Q:
if I use the easier alternative #2 (install to desktop),
will all my current addons (about 30)
still be installed and active in PM28?
(or do I have to reinstall each addon, 1X1?)

Pale Moon will continue to use your current profile, regardless of where it is extracted to.

So no, you will not need to reinstall any addons (provided the ones you are using are compatible with Pale Moon 28).

Sorry. The pminstaller was originally hacked together as a short term help to people. It was never intended to be a long-term solution.

No Problem, thanks for letting us know.

@trava90

Thank you for those 2 steps ..

Worked like a charm .

Hi Trava,

Q:
If I install PMv28
(using your alternative Step#2, above)
to either:
my Home or my Desktop folder,
will I still be able to call my current PMv27.9.4?.

My current PMv27.9.4 is now in the /opt folder...

In other words:
will PMv27.9.4 still be available? (as a backup...).

Thanks!
(Ubuntu linux 14.04 32bit)

Yes it will still be available however both versions will share the same profile which is not backwards-compatible (i.e. once the profile has been updated for v28 you will likely run into issues if you try to go back to v27).

Thanks @trava90
Extracted to /home and changed the location in Settings/Preferred Applications (Xubuntu 16.04)
I suppose it's safe to remove V27 through the pminstaller, or will it erase the profile?

No the pminstaller will not touch your profile during uninstallation.

Uninstalled V27 and everything fine, thanks.

To Trava90.

I am trying to follow your instructions for keeping PM 28 in the opt file and still be able to have auto updates. I am not clear on how to run the command below:
Run the following command from the terminal: sudo chown -R "$USER:$USER" "/opt/palemoon"

Can you give me detailed instructions for running the above command?

Thank you

Open a terminal window and copy/paste the entire command into the terminal. That's it.

Thank you for the help.

Will the pminstaller reappear in an updated version, or is it gone for good?

Gone for good, now that PM's internal updater is functional in Linux.

So....(forgive my denseness)....when a new version of Pale Moon is available, I will get a pop up? Or it will update automatically?

nevadacrab wrote:when a new version of Pale Moon is available, I will get a pop up? Or it will update automatically?

Depends on what you have your preferences set to in Preferences > Advanced > Update, and whether or not your installation is in a user-writable directory/folder.

If it's user-writable and you have it set to "Automatically install updates," it will automatically install them.

If it's set to "Check for updates, but let choose whether to install them" or if it's not user-writable then I presume you'll get a pop-up. (Travis, please correct me if I'm wrong.)