Can you expand? I thought updates required a restart no matter what platform or distro.

I misremembered. The effect is that you don't get the "Restart required" message, but the implementation is that they just postpone applying the update until your next re-open.

> We also are not trying to force you to install updates before you can keep using Firefox. Firefox's update mechanism downloads updates while it is running and installs them at startup. ... In the case of Bug 1705217, the package manager updates Firefox's files on its own schedule that is outside of Firefox's control ... Firefox had no intention of forcing updates to be installed at an inconvenient time.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1761859

That is not a difference in behavior between distro packages and upstream Firefox. If an update gets installed then FF requires you to restart it. So just like the upstream binary's updater doesn't install the update while you're still running it, you shouldn't update the distro package while you're still running it either.

No, if you update upstream Firefox you'll see a prompt inviting you to restart when you want. If you update distro Firefox you'll see a page blocking everything telling you you need to update now.

That's because upstream Firefox separates out downloading and applying the update.

>If you update distro Firefox you'll see a page blocking everything telling you you need to update now.

Correct. Because you installed the update.

>That's because upstream Firefox separates out downloading and applying the update.

Correct. And that's what I'm telling you to do with your package manager as well.

> Correct. And that's what I'm telling you to do with your package manager as well.

Please inform me how to automatically have my distro package manager download updates and install them on the next open. Note that it's critical here that the install is perceptively instant: it means I'm never waiting for my browser to be available.

Now why would I do that? You originally asserted "Conversely Debian broke Firefox's ability to update without requiring a restart" and now you know that Firefox doesn't have the ability to update without requiring a restart. Any further shifting of your goalposts is your problem, not mine.

I did shift the goalposts once because I was wrong. In my second post I expressed that Firefox's built-in update manger still did something much better than the distro package manager.

You asserted that was not the case, so I asked you to prove it. If you don't want to you don't have to, but I'll assume you admit that the distro package manager is in fact inferior.