PureBrowser to Firefox ESR

Updated 1,543 Days AgoPublic

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Moving PureBrowser Profile (bookmarks, history, addons, etc) into Firefox ESR

• Go into PureBrowser - Click the menu button on the top right - Help - Troubleshooting Information. The Troubleshooting Information tab will open. Under the Application Basics section it will list your Profile Directory. Take note of path to the profile directory ` /home/USER/.purism/purebrowser/USERSTRING.default
  • If you have already been migrated to Firefox. Just cd ~/.purism/purebrowser/ and ls -al. This will list all files and directories. The directory named USERSTRING.default is the one.
    • If you have multiple USERSTRING.default then find the one with the date of the last time you used PureBrowser.
• Open Tilix/Terminal and run cd ~/.purism/purebrowser/ and find the USERSTRING.default directory.
• Run the update in Software, or apt, to now migrate to Firefox ESR.
• Then run cp -r USERSTRING.default ~/.mozilla/firefox/ to move the profile folder over.
• Now run firefox -P in Tilix/Terminal.
• Select 'Create Profile' and then 'Next'
• Enter a profile name or leave as it. Then Select 'Choose Folder'.
• Click on your the USERSTRING.default directory that you just moved over and press 'Open'.
• Click 'Finish' and 'Start Firefox'.
• Firefox should load with all the tabs you had open before and everything else will have come over from PureBrowser. You are done!
  • NOTE 1 If using a search engine other than Google, you'll need to go into the menu button on the top right - Preferences - Search - select your Search Engine of choice from the drop down.
  • NOTE 2 We have transitioned from uBlock Origin to EFF's Privacy Badger. That should be the only difference in addons you see.

Made with help from from Mozilla's excellent Firefox Knowledge Base. See: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

Method 2

Another way to move your old Purebrowser profile, to the new Firefox, is to move some parts of the Purebrowser profile folder to Firefox.

To do this:

1. open your Files manager in your home folder and press ctrl+h. This will show you the hidden folders.

Hidden folders/files always start with a . before the name.

You will see the folders .purism and .mozilla

2. Close Firefox if you have it open. If you need to have access to this tutorial during this process then, print this page as a PDF.

3. Open the .mozilla folder, and inside it, the Firefox and then open the folder that has a name ending in: default-esr

4. Delete the content of the folder that has a name ending in default-esr but do not delete the folder itself.

5. Open the folder .purism and then purebrowser and you will see a folder that also has a name that ends in default.

Copy the contents of that folder to inside the folder default-esr in .mozilla/firefox/somestring.default-esr

6. Restart Firefox.

And magic: