[conspire] Firefox troubles after moving to Debian Buster: how can I use my old profile?!

[Peter Knaggs]

I've been on Firefox 68.0 on Ubuntu 18.10 for a while,
but then it suddenly stopped being upgradable, so
in an attempt to go back to using Debian I installed
Debian 10 (buster) on a different machine and
copied my .mozilla directory across from my
Ubuntu 18.10 machine.

But now when I launch Firefox 85.5.0esr
in Debian 10, I'm running into this curious trouble,
it's giving me this message:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This installation of Firefox has a new profile.
It does not share bookmarks, passwords and
user preferences with other installations of
Firefox (including Firefox, Firefox ESR, Firefox
Beta, Firefox Developer Edition, and Firefox
Nightly) on this computer.

To sync information you've already saved to Firefox with this
installation of Firefox, sign in with your Firefox Account.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I doubt I should risk creating any "Firefox Account", so does that mean
it's the end of the road of my journey with Firefox?

I can't seem to persuade the Firefox 85.5.0esr to take
the earlier profile, and it seems strange to have to
set up all the saved passwords and preferences all
over again, although exporting and importing the bookmarks
is of course doable even though it's a bit awkward.

If Firefox is going to be making strange decisions
like this, seemingly abandoning their "on-premises" users,
it looks like it's time to switch to something else...

What browser would you recommend for folks who have
to manage their profile information locally on their own machine?

Thanks,
Peter.
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