<div dir="ltr">Having dipped my toes in the water with Nix, perhaps it can help you?<div><br></div><div>The `nix shell` command can construct a temporary environment with a given package installed. The trick[2] is to make sure you're using the right version of the nixpkgs repository that happens to include the version of Firefox that you care about. Linked from [2], there's a handy lookup site to track down such nixpkgs version hashes for a given package. It even links to shell snippets like</div><div><br></div><div>```</div>nix shell github:nixos/nixpkgs/e6f23dc08d3624daab7094b701aa3954923c6bbb#firefox ; firefox<br><div>``` [4]</div><div><br></div><div>which I just used to run Firefox at version 139.0.4 (I use Arch, btw \U0001f643).</div><div><br></div><div>I expect this would need a fair bit of network transfer so, beware!</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>- Tom</div><div><br></div><div>My research breadcrumbs:</div><div>[1]: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=nix-shell+run+package+at+specific+version&oq=nix-shell+run+package+at+specific+version&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigAdIBCDg3MTJqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">google search</a></div><div>[2]: <a href="https://lazamar.github.io/download-specific-package-version-with-nix/">blog post</a></div><div>[3]: <a href="https://lazamar.co.uk/nix-versions/?channel=nixpkgs-unstable&package=firefox">nixpkgs version for each firefox version</a></div><div>[4]: <a href="https://lazamar.co.uk/nix-versions/?package=firefox&version=139.0.4&fullName=firefox-139.0.4&keyName=firefox&revision=e6f23dc08d3624daab7094b701aa3954923c6bbb&channel=nixpkgs-unstable#instructions">shell command for 139.0.4</a></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Apr 1, 2026 at 4:03\u202fPM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <<a href="mailto:kwlug-disc@kwlug.org">kwlug-disc@kwlug.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Tragically, I need to run multiple versions of Firefox on the same<br>
laptop for some debugging. What is the easiest acceptable way to do<br>
this? Set up a Docker container for the alternative versions?<br>
Something else?<br>
<br>
I don't care about syncing user profiles -- everything runs in private<br>
browsing mode. For now I only need to run Linux Firefox. I do need to<br>
be able to control the versions of Firefox I am running. <br>
<br>
The distribution is Debian stable, if that matters. <br>
<br>
- Paul<br>
<br>
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