Pale Moon is an Open Source, Goanna-based web browser available for Microsoft Windows and Linux (with other operating systems in development), focusing on efficiency and ease of use. Make sure to get the most out of your browser!
Pale Moon offers you a browsing experience in a browser completely built from its own, independently developed source that has been forked off from Firefox/Mozilla code a number of years ago, with carefully selected features and optimizations to improve the browser's stability and user experience, while offering full customization and a growing collection of extensions and themes to make the browser truly your own. [1]
Many prefer to use Pale Moon over FireFox, because, they feel Pale Moon is what FireFox ought to have been. Many claim that Pale Moon is faster than FireFox, because, it has less “garbage”; but instead has continued to polish an already winning formula. Moreover, many feel they can trust the Pale Moon community over communities such as Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft, because, it does not have the same history of spying on its users – that these communities do.
According to the Pale Moon Linux developer(s), gcc 4.9.4, or alternatively a few other older versions of gcc, is required to produce a fully optimized (and still stable) Pale Moon Slackware package. A gcc-4.9.4 SlackBuild, to compile and package gcc-4.9.4 your self, can be found at SlackBuilds.org, here; and already built Slackware packages can be found here.
Arguable, the easiest way to install Pale Moon, would be to grab Pale Moon already compiled and packaged. You can find the Pale Moon Slackware package that is built with the following SlackBuild here
Alternatively, you can find packages built by alienBOB here. Note: aleinBOB's packages have been built in an alternative fashion, which may be better for older hardware, but, at least in theory, fails to take advantage of all of Pale Moon's development.
The following instructions shows how to compile and install Pale Moon web browser using scripts found at SlackBuilds.org. There is currently, at the time of writing this, two SlackBuilds that can be found at SlackBuilds.org: One that builds from source, and, one that repackages the officially pre built binary provided by the Pale Moon community. This guide focuses on the SlackBuild that builds Pale Moon from source.
su -
cd /tmp/
wget https://notabug.org/khronosschoty/SlackBuilds/archive/master.tar.gz -O SlackBuilds-master.tar.gz
tar -xvf SlackBuilds-master.tar.gz
Note: if the slackbuild is downloaded using a web browser the tar archive's name might not be correct; and will need to be adjusted.
cd slackbuilds/network/palemoon
wget https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/archive/27.9.3_Release/Pale-Moon-27.9.3_Release.tar.gz \ http://ponce.cc/slackware/sources/repo/autoconf-2.13.tar.xz
chmod +x palemoon.SlackBuild
./palemoon.SlackBuild
Slackware package /tmp/palemoon-27.9.3-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz created.
upgradepkg --install-new /tmp/palemoon-27.9.3-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz
With the introduction of Pale Moon 27.0.0, Pale Moon and FireFox have continued to significantly deviate from their common code origins; this deviation has caused many FireFox add-ons that used to work in Pale Moon, to no longer work in Pale Moon. Ideally there is no good reason to install an earlier version of Pale Moon, but, for those of us who feel that they must use an earlier version of Pale Moon, this is how, to do it, using the SlackBuild used in this guide.
This guide modifies the SlackBuild script used in this guide to compile and install Pale Moon 26.5.0… the same methods can presumable be used to compile and install even earlier versions of Pale Moon; by simple changing the version number to the desired value.
wget https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/archive/27.9.3_Release/Pale-Moon-27.9.3_Release.tar.gz \ http://ponce.cc/slackware/sources/repo/autoconf-2.13.tar.xz
Simple modify the version number so that the desired version is downloaded, like this:
wget https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/archive/26.5.0_Release/Pale-Moon-26.5.0_Release.tar.gz \ http://ponce.cc/slackware/sources/repo/autoconf-2.13.tar.xz
Pale Moon is capable of installing many add-ons that were made for FireFox, albeit not all FireFox add-ons will work; ideally one would install and use Pale Moon specific add-ons that can be found here. The Pale Moon add-on site recommends looking here, if you are unable to locate a desired Pale Moon specific add-on.
Although, the FireFox add-on website might be difficult when trying to install FireFox add-ons, there are several ways FireFox add-ons can be installed. One method of installation is to download and manually install the desired add-on. To do this go to the “add-ons” page in Pale Moon; by typing in the Pale Moon address bar about:addons and then pressing the enter key. You will then be presented with the Pale Moon add-on page. At the top of the screen you will notice a search box, with the text “search all add-ons”; to the immediate left of that search box is a small box; which if left clicked, will present you with a number of options – one such option is to install an add-on from file – select this option and the installation of the add-on will begin.
Some websites will block access to their site if Pale Moon's user agent does not indicate its one of the big 4 – Chrome, Internet Explorer, FireFox, or Safari. One solution is to install an add-on that allows you to modify Pale Moon's user agent on the fly, and, then if you wish, back again; one such add-on is “PrefBar”, which can be found here.
GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/gtkrc palemoon-27.9.3