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Perhaps they disable FF updates to let their package managers handle it? (I'm thinking in arch linux land for example)

Not sure how that conflict is resolved

That's exactly what the "Distribution" directory is for. If the package manager is going to handle updates, it can disable FF's own built-in updater. But if you then download and run the vanilla installer from Mozilla directly, it will remove the distribution customizations, including switching back to the built-in updater.

I'm not even sure if the linux version of FF has an auto-updater. And even if it does every distro I've ever used (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and currently Arch Linux) must disable it, because I've never had FF try to auto update on linux.

Automatic updates don't play nicely with package managers that install things as root, so it is disabled during the build process. It does exist though, and is enabled on Linux if you download firefox from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new.

OP in this thread seems to be using that installer with automatic updates, and then disabling it by hand, since when updating via a package manager you don't run into this issue.

> I'm not even sure if the linux version of FF has an auto-updater.

It does if you download it directly from Mozilla.

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