Is there a way to use multiple instances of Chromium or Firefox?

I usually have different instances of my web browsers to attend to various types of usages, on Windows that means using portable versions of Chrome and Firefox. The existing portable versions of Firefox and Chromium for Linux are outdated and lack immediate support, compared with the portable apps for Windows. I am wondering if there is any way to make the current versions of Firefox and Chromium provided by Ubuntu work as "portable", which by that I mean running as the equivalent of a Windows portable app, detached from the default browsers.

Solution 1:

Would using Mozilla Firefox with multiple 'profile' work? Each of these would have separate settings, plug-ins, history, etc.

Use this to setup additional profiles:

firefox -ProfileManager

Then this to set a particular profile:

firefox -P <profile>

Solution 2:

I think its impossible to use two ubuntu firefox at the same time. you could choose your first or the alternative profile but you cant run them at the same time. To enter firefox in a shell will open the allredy running firefox instance, but no new one.

One idea could be to use the ubuntu firefox and a static linked firefox (if it is still avaible).

Solution 3:

As a last resort and if you chose to use Chromium you could set up multiple online profiles and just create multiple instances of the program and sign into each one of them individually.

This remembers your bookmarks, settings, extentions, history and everything else.

Of course this will be a last resort due to the length of time it might take to setup all of these online profiles but it's worth a shot if all else fails.

**Start a new window by right-clicking the icon and selecting "Create a new window with a temp profile" and sign in from there on each instance.