Hacker News Reader

What I'd really like is to have a second, isolated firefox process that I can run alongside my main one with as much functional independence as possible.

What's stopping you from running a separate process?

View on HN

Firefox is a single-process application, and won't let you start another one (at least sharing the same user data; you can run a different build, but you can't share/use the same user data).

Given that you're looking for "functional independence", I don't understand why you'd want it to run on the same profile. Share your bookmarks and history between them with Firefox Sync, and tailor your selection of add-ons to the types of content you'll be viewing with each one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com