Use Several Firefox Versions with Different Profiles

The last stable Firefox is 2.0.0.14 but soon Firefox 3.0 will be out. Most of us already have 2.0 shipping with our distribution (Iceweasel in Debian's case), but we will want to try the new 3.0, and eventually use it in parallel with the current stable. But running two versions of Firefox will get the configuration files mixed, settings from one version being applied to the other and vice versa.

So, in order to keep each Firefox version with its own configuration files, and without mixing them, Firefox must use one profile for each of the releases.

For example, run Iceweasel 2.0.0.14 with this option:

iceweasel --no-remote -P my_iceweasel_profile

And the new Firefox 3.0 like this:

firefox --no-remote -P firefox_new_profile

This way, Firefox will keep your configuration settings clean, no matter what version you are running. You can see your available profiles inside the ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini file.

To see more about available options to Firefox, run firefox --help.

When you run Firefox with a new profile, a dialog showing available profiles will popup

Note: I have initially bumped into this tip on the Debian Forums, here. Thanks for this good tip!

Updated: Jun 14, 2008 (Created: Jun 14, 2008)