Firefox 153 Available With Support For Vulkan Video Decoding, Experimental JPEG-XL

Mozilla has uploaded the Firefox 153.0 release binaries today for the newest monthly update to this cross-platform web browser. Making Firefox 153 exciting is that it's the newest Extended Support Release "ESR" as well as introducing Vulkan Video decode support.

Firefox 153 is the newest ESR release designed for enterprises, schools, and other organization for long-term stability.

On the feature side, Firefox 153 introduces Vulkan Video decoding support. Firefox on Linux to date has focused on the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) that works well for some vendors but lacks official support from NVIDIA unless using the independent NVIDIA-VAAPI driver project that layers VA-API on NVDEC. There are also various embedded drivers and more not supporting VA-API. Now with Firefox there is initial Vulkan Video decode support for that modern, cross-vendor and cross-platform video acceleration interface.

Firefox 153 also brings a number of PDF enhancements, continued enablement around JPEG-XL, HDR video playback on Windows, and more.

Within the Firefox Labs area is where the experimental support for the JPEG-XL image format can be enabled. More details within the beta release notes.

Firefox 153 release binaries can be downloaded from ftp.mozilla.org.