Firefox 84 Beta Begins Enabling WebRender By Default On Linux

With Firefox 83 released, like clock-work Mozilla has released the beta of Firefox 84.

Firefox 84 is the final release supporting Adobe Flash and NPAPI plug-ins. Flash support will not work on future Firefox releases.

Most exciting though with Firefox 84 Beta is that Mozilla is finally enabling WebRender by default on Linux! While Mozilla has gradually been enabling WebRender by default on Windows and macOS systems under varying releases based on GPU/driver configurations and more, Linux hasn't seen this performance-boosting option by default. Linux users can run Firefox with the MOZ_WEBRENDER=1 environment variable to force enable WebRender, but beginning with Firefox 84 they will begin enabling it by default in select configurations.

Initially the WebRender on Linux is being enabled if running Firefox from the GNOME desktop environment and doing so on the X.Org/X11 Server. With further testing/QA and validation we will presumably see broader Firefox WebRender support on Linux in future milestones.

Those wanting to try out Firefox 84 Beta can download it from Mozilla.org. I'll have up some fresh Firefox WebRender Linux benchmarks soon.

Firefox 84.0 stable should be out around 15 December.