Why does it take so much time for Ubuntu to update to a new version of Firefox

The official Firefox 9 release was 5 days before the Christmas break, so we took the decision to upload it to the proposed pockets over the Christmas holiday, to minimize the impact of any problems. It has now been published as a security update to all users this morning.

For Firefox 8, a late change in the beta cycle caused a bug where language packs were being disabled on upgrade. Unfortunately, we only caught this after the official release (but, fortunately, before publishing the update). This meant that the release had to be delayed for Ubuntu users.

The intention is that we will publish updates close to the upstream release date, and there really is no reason why we can't do that. The fact that we currently aren't doing this successfully, means that we just need to get much better. In the meantime, I can only offer you my apologies for having to wait.

• See my blog for more details on the work we do.
• How do I install the latest stable version of Firefox?