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Announcing Faster, Lighter Firefox Downloads for Linux with .tar.xz Packaging!
(blog.nightly.mozilla.org)
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Most normal users do not do this. But there might be special packages with special setups, like scripts downloading and installing from Mozillas download links. Or package creators themselves might use it. Or maybe you are a developer, in which case such direct downloads would be helpful for testing and comparing stuff. I also assume most people do not care or notice any difference with this change. Still its an improvement without much drawback and thats always good, even if its only a few people benefiting of it.
Yeah, particularly for downloading Firefox Nightly, these self-contained archives are extremely helpful.
And sometimes -bin AUR packages (and of course some normal packages, behind the scenes) use those packages as base. Even though I prefer normal or -git packages.