How to Install Pale Moon on Ubuntu

Pale Moon is an open-source web browser built on the Goanna engine, a fork of Firefox’s Gecko. It provides a lightweight, customizable browsing experience that uses fewer system resources than mainstream browsers while maintaining compatibility with many modern web standards. Common use cases include running on older hardware, accessing legacy web extensions that no longer work in Firefox, and browsing with a traditional interface that avoids the frequent UI changes found in Chrome and Firefox. By the end of this guide, you will have Pale Moon installed on Ubuntu with desktop menu entries, terminal access, and automatic update capability.

Update Ubuntu Before Pale Moon Installation

Before installing new software, update your package index to ensure you have the latest security patches and dependency information. This step prevents potential conflicts during installation and ensures all required libraries are current.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install Pale Moon Browser

Pale Moon for Linux is distributed as an xz-compressed tarball that you extract and run from any location. The official method installs to your home directory with system-wide integration through symlinks and desktop entries. This approach keeps the installation self-contained while providing automatic updates through Pale Moon’s internal updater.

These steps work identically on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, 24.04 LTS, and 26.04 LTS. The tarball installation method is architecture-aware and downloads the appropriate build for your system automatically.

Install Required Dependencies

Before downloading Pale Moon, install the utilities needed to fetch and extract the tarball. The curl package handles the download with redirect support, while xz-utils provides decompression for the xz-compressed archive:

sudo apt install curl xz-utils -y

Download Pale Moon Tarball

Pale Moon distributes Linux builds through their archive server, which allows automated version detection. The following commands automatically fetch the latest version and download the appropriate tarball for your system architecture:

ARCH=$(uname -m)
MAJOR=$(curl -fsSL "http://archive.palemoon.org/palemoon/" 2>/dev/null | grep -oP '\d+\.x/' | sed 's/\.x\///' | sort -n | tail -1)
VERSION=$(curl -fsSL "http://archive.palemoon.org/palemoon/${MAJOR}.x/" 2>/dev/null | grep -oP '\d+\.\d+\.\d+(\.\d+)?/' | sed 's/\///' | sort -V | tail -1)
echo "Downloading Pale Moon $VERSION for $ARCH"
curl -fsSL -o /tmp/palemoon.tar.xz "http://archive.palemoon.org/palemoon/${MAJOR}.x/${VERSION}/Linux/palemoon-${VERSION}.linux-${ARCH}-gtk3.tar.xz"

This script performs several operations:

• ARCH=$(uname -m) detects your system architecture (x86_64 or i686)
• MAJOR=... scrapes the archive page to find the highest major version directory
• VERSION=... finds the latest point release within that major version
• curl -fsSL -o downloads the tarball silently, following redirects, and saves to /tmp/

The script downloads the GTK3 version, which provides better integration with modern desktop environments including GNOME and KDE. If your system uses an older desktop environment that lacks GTK3 support, replace gtk3 with gtk2 in the download URL.

Extract Pale Moon to Home Directory

Next, extract the tarball to your home directory. This creates a palemoon folder containing the browser files:

tar -xf /tmp/palemoon.tar.xz -C ~/

Once extraction completes, verify the contents by listing the directory:

ls ~/palemoon/

Expected output showing the browser files:

application.ini  browser  chrome.manifest  defaults  dependentlibs.list  dictionaries  fonts  gtk2  icons  icudt63l.dat  libfreeblpriv3.so  libhunspell.so  liblgpllibs.so  libmozavcodec.so  libmozavutil.so  libmozgtk.so  libmozsqlite3.so  libnspr4.so  libnss3.so  libnssckbi.so  libnssutil3.so  libplc4.so  libplds4.so  libsmime3.so  libsoftokn3.so  libssl3.so  libxul.so  license.txt  palemoon  palemoon-bin  palemoon.res  platform.ini  plugin-container  precomplete  removed-files  run-mozilla.sh  update-settings.ini  updater  updater.ini

Create System Integration

To run Pale Moon from anywhere in the terminal and integrate it with your desktop environment, create symlinks for the executable and icons. First, create the symlink to the Pale Moon binary in /usr/bin/:

sudo ln -sf ~/palemoon/palemoon /usr/bin/palemoon

Next, create symlinks for the application icons so they appear correctly in your application menu and window decorations:

sudo ln -sf ~/palemoon/browser/chrome/icons/default/default16.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/palemoon.png
sudo ln -sf ~/palemoon/browser/chrome/icons/default/default32.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/palemoon.png
sudo ln -sf ~/palemoon/browser/chrome/icons/default/default48.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/palemoon.png
sudo ln -sf ~/palemoon/browser/icons/mozicon128.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/palemoon.png

Finally, create a desktop entry so Pale Moon appears in your application menu with proper categorization and file associations:

sudo tee /usr/share/applications/palemoon.desktop > /dev/null <<EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Pale Moon Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer
Exec=palemoon %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=palemoon
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;Internet
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
EOF

Update the icon cache to ensure the icons display correctly throughout your desktop environment:

sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor

Register with Default Browser Selector (Optional)

On Ubuntu, you can register Pale Moon with the update-alternatives system. This allows you to set Pale Moon as the system default browser and makes it available to applications that use x-www-browser or gnome-www-browser:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /usr/bin/palemoon 100
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser gnome-www-browser /usr/bin/palemoon 100

The priority value of 100 determines precedence when multiple browsers are registered. Higher values take priority when using automatic mode.

Verify Installation

To confirm the installation succeeded and verify that the symlink works correctly, check the version from your terminal:

palemoon -v

Expected output:

Pale Moon 33.x.x

The version number shown is a placeholder. Your output displays the actual installed version, which will match what you downloaded from the archive.

Launch Pale Moon Browser

After installation, you can launch Pale Moon through your desktop environment or terminal.

Launch from Applications Menu

Search for “Pale Moon” in Activities (GNOME) or your application launcher and open it from the applications list. If the icon does not appear immediately, log out and back in to refresh the application menu cache.

Launch from Terminal

Alternatively, start Pale Moon from any terminal window:

palemoon

To launch Pale Moon without blocking your terminal, run it in the background:

palemoon &

Manage Pale Moon Browser

Update Pale Moon

Unlike APT-managed packages, Pale Moon includes an internal updater that automatically checks for and applies updates when you run the browser. Because the installation resides in your home directory (which your user account can write to), updates apply without requiring administrator privileges. This self-updating design keeps you current without manual package management.

To manually check for updates, open Pale Moon and navigate to Help → About Pale Moon. The dialog displays your current version and checks for available updates. If an update is available, click the update button to download and apply it.

If you prefer to update manually by downloading a new tarball, delete the existing installation directory first and repeat the installation steps:

rm -rf ~/palemoon

Then run the download and extraction commands from the installation section above. The symlinks you created earlier remain valid because they point to the same location.

Remove Pale Moon Browser

To completely remove Pale Moon from your system, first remove the update-alternatives registrations if you created them:

sudo update-alternatives --remove gnome-www-browser /usr/bin/palemoon
sudo update-alternatives --remove x-www-browser /usr/bin/palemoon

Next, remove all installed files and symlinks:

sudo rm -f /usr/bin/palemoon /usr/share/applications/palemoon.desktop
sudo rm -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor/*/apps/palemoon.png
rm -rf ~/palemoon

Remove User Data

Warning: The following command permanently deletes all Pale Moon user data including bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords, and extensions. Export any data you want to keep before proceeding.

To remove your Pale Moon profile data:

rm -rf ~/.moonchild\ productions

Also remove any file associations created by Pale Moon:

rm -f ~/.local/share/applications/userapp-Pale\ Moon-*.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

Troubleshooting

Pale Moon Fails to Start with Library Errors

If Pale Moon displays library errors when launching, you may be missing GTK dependencies. First, check the error output to identify which libraries are missing:

~/palemoon/palemoon 2>&1 | head -10

A common error message when GTK3 libraries are missing:

XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /home/user/palemoon/libmozgtk.so:
libgtk-3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM.

For GTK3 builds (the default), install the GTK3 libraries:

sudo apt install libgtk-3-0 -y

If you downloaded the GTK2 build instead, install GTK2:

sudo apt install libgtk2.0-0 -y

Icon Does Not Appear in Application Menu

If the Pale Moon icon is missing from your application menu after installation, update the icon cache and refresh your desktop:

sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor

Then log out and back in, or restart your desktop environment. Some desktop environments cache the application list and require a session restart to detect new entries.

Browser Cannot Update Automatically

The internal updater requires write access to the Pale Moon installation directory. If you installed to a location other than your home directory (for example, /opt), automatic updates fail because root permissions are required. Either reinstall to ~/palemoon/ or update manually by downloading new tarballs as described in the update section above.

Migrate from Old Repository Method

If you previously installed Pale Moon using the stevenpusser OBS repository (which no longer provides Pale Moon packages), you should migrate to the tarball method. First, remove the old installation and repository configuration:

sudo apt remove palemoon -y
sudo rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:stevenpusser.list
sudo rm -f /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home_stevenpusser.gpg
sudo apt update

After removing the old installation, follow the tarball installation steps above to install the current version of Pale Moon.

Additional Resources

If you are exploring alternative browsers for Ubuntu, these related guides may help:

• Install Ungoogled Chromium on Ubuntu for a privacy-focused Chromium fork without Google integration
• Install SeaMonkey on Ubuntu for another Mozilla-based internet suite with browser, email, and HTML editor
• Install Firefox ESR on Ubuntu for the Extended Support Release with longer update cycles
• Install Flatpak on Ubuntu if you prefer sandboxed application installations

Conclusion

You now have Pale Moon installed on Ubuntu with full desktop integration. The browser receives updates automatically through its internal updater, keeping you current without manual intervention. Pale Moon’s lightweight design makes it suitable for older hardware while its extension support provides customization options for users who prefer the classic Firefox experience. The tarball installation method ensures you always have access to the latest version directly from the Pale Moon project.