With Firefox 157 out, Firefox 158 entered public beta on September 28. The most Linux-relevant change is how Firefox makes PDFs.

SkPDF on Linux and macOS

When you “Save as PDF” or print to PDF, Firefox now uses SkPDF, the PDF-generation backend of the Skia graphics library, on Linux and macOS. Mozilla says it fixes various PDF rendering issues and improves accessibility of the generated files.

PDF output on Linux has historically gone through a different path than on Windows, and it has produced its share of odd results: wrong fonts, broken layouts, and documents that screen readers struggle with. Moving to the same engine Chrome uses for PDF output should make results more consistent. This is separate from the built-in PDF viewer, which Firefox 156 made up to 45 percent faster.

Other changes

• New Tab wallpapers: keep a library of your own images under “Your images”
• Better form-filling suggestions in Smart Window
• WebAuthn conditional UI on input elements, which lets passkeys appear as autofill suggestions in login fields, the smoother passkey sign-in flow
• For developers: typed arithmetic in CSS calc() and better WebSocket message tracking in the dev tools

When

Firefox 158 is due on October 13, alongside updates to Mozilla’s Extended Support Release branches. The beta is available from Mozilla for testing, and is not recommended as a daily browser.