Install the Real Firefox on Debian 7

If you have ever played around with the Debian distribution proper, you will quickly notice that Firefox is not available as a browser and in its place is something called IceWeasel. Here I will show you how to install the real Firefox browser on Debian 7.

The first step is to remove the IceWeasel package if it's installed:

$ sudo apt-get remove iceweasel

Next, we will make use of a Linux Mint package repository that targets Debian proper. To do this add the following line to you /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian import

Now when you update your package list you will see an error like so:

$ sudo apt-get update
... a ton of output ...
W: GPG error: http://packages.linuxmint.com debian Release: The following
signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available:
NO_PUBKEY 3EE67F3D0FF405B2

This happens because you don't have the proper key for the Linux Mint repository. To get a valid PGP key do the following:

$ sudo gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 3EE67F3D0FF405B2
$ sudo gpg --export 3EE67F3D0FF405B2 > 3EE67F3D0FF405B2.gpg
$ sudo apt-key add ./3EE67F3D0FF405B2.gpg
$ sudo rm ./3EE67F3D0FF405B2.gpg

Now you should be able to update the package list successfully. Then what's left to do is to install firefox and you can do that like so:

$ sudo apt-get install firefox firefox-l10n-en-us

Enjoy firefox!