I was excited about the release of version 3.0 of Firefox, and planning on installing when the final version is released. I’ve been toying with the beta 4, available on Gutsy’s Universe repository.
But I’m very disapointed when the release version did not (or have not) make it into Gutsy’s repository. And to date, I haven’t found any unofficial repos that carry the package.
So, the only option left is to install manually. After rummaging around ubuntu forum, this is what i think the best solution:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxNewVersion
Please remember that installing Firefox 3.0 using the method above require you to install firefox 2 first. Standard installation of Ubuntu includes firefox as default browser, so it should be no problem. This method also preserve any installed add-ons, though not all Firefox 2 add-ons is compatible with Firefox 3. It is recommended that you install all of the add-ons that you want such as flash and mozilla-mplayer first, before upgrading to Firefox 3.
Preparations
- Backup the Firefox 2 profile with:
cp -R ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.backup
- Then, download the package here.
- Extract the package to /opt. Before extracting, make sure /opt exist, if not, create it.
$cd /
$sudo mkdir opt
$sudo tar -jxvf firefox-3.0.tar.bz2 -C /opt
- Link the plugins folder of the previous installation with the new one.
$sudo mv /opt/firefox/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins.bk
$sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins
- To make Firefox 3 replace the curently installed version of firefox, create a symlink between the excutables /usr/bin/firefox and /opt/firefox/firefox
$sudo dpkg-divert –divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu –rename /usr/bin/firefox
$sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
Done! Firefox 3 should start whenever you click on the firefox icon on your menu or launcher.
To restore the previous installation of Firefox, do the following:
$sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox
$sudo dpkg-divert –rename –remove /usr/bin/firefox
$mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.manual.download
$mv ~/.mozilla.backup ~/.mozilla
Below are some of the add-ons that I installed along with Firefox 3:
- Video Downloadhelper, allow to save streaming flash movies to local storage
- Adblock Plus, helps you block unwanted web content such as flash ad
- Hide menubar, hides menubar and show it temporary by pressing “ALT” button
- Fission, combines address bar and progress bar and act like safari
All I did in terminal was:
sudo apt-get updateThen updated it with the Update Manager.
/usr/bin/update-managerOn my Gutsy repos, the newest package that I can find is the Beta 4 🙁
You are running Gutsy, right?
Oh. I see what you did there.
hmm I dont see active option check for updates after this…
Mine works fine, but sometime, to make sure update works, I have to run firefox with sudo.
After than you need to give back the ownership of .mozilla folder on your home folder to you again. On mine, I run:
$sudo chown -R surfer:surfer /home/surfer/.mozilla
Replace “surfer” with your login