Firefox on Linux or Windows

Firefox works on a lot of operating systems including Windows and Linux. I used Firefox 3.6.8 side by side on Ubuntu Linux 10.4 and Windows XP. Is there any difference?

Firefox used to have a big gap between release dates on different operating systems and now has most of the major variations available at the same time. There was a time when you had to have a computer set up with each operating system to your Web sites on each variation of Firefox. Now you can choose your operating system based on other requirements and use the latest Firefox.

Ubuntu Linux is based on Debian Linux and is a little more up to date with extra applications you do not get in Debian. Firefox contains some images with copyright attached. Debian does not allow those images and includes Iceweasel instead of Firefox. Iceweasel is supposed to be a clean version of Firefox. When I tested fresh installations of Debian, Iceweasel was always a very out of date Firefox. An update rarely brought Iceweasel anywhere near the current Firefox. Ubuntu arrives with a slightly out of date Firefox and is easy to update to the current release. Firefox is one of several reasons to use Ubuntu instead of Debian.

Fonts

The look of text on the screen depends on the default fonts installed in your operating system. The common defaults in Windows XP work on screen for both LCD and CRT screens of every size. Ubuntu Linux is based on Debian and they both have defaults that are hard to read at their default size. You have to increase the font size a little bit. That difference is enough to make Web developers test on both Linux and Windows.

Downloads

Firefox used to download DVD ISO images which are 4.6 GigaBytes. Firefox 3.6.8 crashes on both Windows and Linux when downloading anything bigger than a few hundred MegaBytes. Using two computers with identical hardware, I could download 300 MB under Linux and 800 MB under Windows XP. The Windows download limit is big enough for an Ubuntu CD but not big enough for a Debian Linux DVD or a CentOS Linux DVD or a Fedora Linux DVD. The Linux failure point is too small for anything significant.

Everything else is the same

The various settings files are the same. You can move your bookmarks and other settings back and forth between Firefox on Linux and Firefox on Windows. You can place the settings on a USB memory stick for increased flexibility and there is an option to use settings from a Web site.

Most of the add-in modules work on both operating systems.

Web development

When you use Firefox for Web development, you use a bunch of other tools at the same time. Bluefish, Filezilla, Gimp, and all the other important tools work in a similar way on Windows and Linux. The only painful bit is file selection. Each tool works in a different way for file selection. Some tools use a primitive Linux/Unix approach on both Windows and Linux.

Firefox uses the native presentation of the operating system, works the Windows way on Windows, and the Linux way on Linux. Linux can use Gnome or KDE as the operating system graphical user interface. I tested with Gnome and everything worked. The Firefox approach is one of the smoothest and most consistent among Web development applications.

Conclusion

Firefox are effectively the same on Linux and Windows. Firefox might be a reason to choose one Linux distribution over another Linux distribution but is not a reason to choose one operating system over another.