Mozilla Firefox web browser 80.0 was released on August 25, 2020.
One major change for Linux users is that Firefox 80 now supports VA-API GPU acceleration on X11.
This is not enabled by default, but you can go to about:config page, search for ‘vaapi’ and manually turn on the feature by setting relevant values to true.
Other changes in Firefox 80 include:
- Can be set as the default system PDF viewer.
- The add-ons blocklist now is enabled to improve performance and scalability.
- Add a number of animations for reduced motion settings.
- Various security and other fixes.
- Web Animations API compositing operations are now enabled.
- And more in release note.
How to Get Firefox 80:
It’s recommended to wait for Linux Distributions’ build of Firefox package, then upgrade the browser through Update Manager.
You can however download the Linux portable package, as well as Snap, Mac OS, source, and Windows packages at the link below: