Firefox Arm64 available but RasPi 3B+ still 32-bit

Question

I want to be able to use my Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a desktop system. In order to do that, I need to be able to make use of apps such as Firefox-ARM64.

Given all of the confusion regarding migrating the Raspberry Pi OS to a 64-bit OS, I have no idea as to what is actually going on. Is there any intention to have a 64-bit OS branch for the latest current Raspberry Pi model and future models that may have improved USB support and/or more memory?

While I have not seen any info on future hardware releases, I think it would be advisable to take a positive direction to support a native 64 bit OS.

Are there any official updates to this issue?

Answer 1

Yes, there are official updates to this issue. Eben Upton has said that there won't be any 64 bit Raspbian yet, because they want to maintain backwards compatibility with older systems and do not have the resources to maintain a 32 bit OS and a 64 bit OS. However, there are other alternative operating systems that are compiled for arm64 on the Raspberry Pi, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. If you really want to run Firefox on Raspbian, you might be able to compile it yourself, or you might be able to run it under qemu.

Answer 2

32-bit Firefox (and Firefox ESR) was fixed with the release of Raspbian Buster.

The reason it was broken on Stretch for so long has to do with an armhf-specific bug in the AAPCS calling convention starting with gcc 5. This went away by itself with the eventual move to gcc 8.

To install Firefox ESR:

sudo apt-get install -y firefox-esr

To install Firefox proper on Buster:

sudo apt install -y dirmngr
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa/ubuntu cosmic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/firefox.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys A6DCF7707EBC211F
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y firefox

Are there any official updates to [the 64-bit OS] issue?

The ongoing efforts of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Eben's 2018 blog post, and lengthy threads on the Raspberry Pi forums reflect a consistent message. Although "not yet", a supported 64-bit OS is inevitable for when hardware products go beyond 4 GB.