[lilflipper]

I want to upgrade my firefox version to 3.0 but I have no idea what to do once I download it. I am running Linpus Linux Lite. I am totally new to linux and have yet to get book to help me. I am so new I am still trying to figure out what Fedora is. Help...

[lotuseclat79]

Hi lilflipper,

You ask a good question, and I have to say that my emails to mozilla about improving the quality of the installation instructions in this area for Linux seems to be have been ignored twice now (for Linux).

At any rate, in Linux the profile is stored in a subdirectory of your /home/<useraccountname>/.mozilla
for an Ubuntu Linux system (Live CD), it is /home/ubuntu/.mozilla

Before installing the Firefox 3.0 upgrade, I would recommend that you first save off your Firefox profile as follows, assuming a regular user account with "$" prompt:
$ tar -cf ./mozila.tar ./.mozilla
$ bzip2 mozilla.tar
which (if you don't have bzip2 and bunzip2 - I highly recommend that you get them, as the Firefox distribution is released as a .bz2 tar file) will create the compressed file: mozilla.tar.bz2. Save it somewhere handy if you need to restore it.

When you download the file: firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2 , you can find the ReleaseNotes here, so be sure to download them also. Just click on the major links to expand the inline comments.
The Installing link indicates that the installation will overwrite your existing installation and some of the add-on extensions may not work until they are updated.

The following links are how my Firefox executable is setup, you can give the same commands I use to illustrate to see how your installation is currently setup before you install the new release:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -lt `which firefox`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2008-04-22 13:53 /usr/bin/firefox -> firefox-3.0
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -lt /usr/bin/firefox-3.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2008-09-11 06:28 /usr/bin/firefox-3.0 -> ../lib/firefox/firefox
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -lt /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3951 2008-07-02 10:09 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ file /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox: POSIX shell script text executable

Also:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -ldt /usr/lib/fire*
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 1000 2008-07-02 10:09 /usr/lib/firefox
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 2008-04-22 13:54 /usr/lib/firefox.orig
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 430 2008-04-22 13:53 /usr/lib/firefox-3.0b5
which indicates that before I installed the new release of firefox-3.0.1.tar, I moved the original firefox subdirectory of /usr/lib/firefox to /usr/lib/firefox.orig to save my previous release:
$ sudo mv /usr/lib/firefox /usr/lib/firefox.orig
$ sudo mv firefox firefox.orig

When you download firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2, I recommend you send it to your Desktop so that you can get a good look at what is in the release before you install it.

Assuming you have it on your Desktop, issue the command:
$ bunzip2 firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2
which will uncompress the download file into a tar file

Then issue this command to get a look at the components of the distribution:
$ tar -tvf ./firefox-3.0.1.tar | less

With the less command you can move back and forth to see the filenames of each component.

What information this tells you is where you need to install the tar file. The output of the previous tar -tvf command piped into the less command indicates that the distribution file does not have absolute (full) path names from the root (/) directory as they all begin with: firefox/...

That indicates that you need to install the tar file in the /usr/lib directory using the following steps:
$ sudo cp firefox-3.0.1.tar /usr/lib
$ sudo mv firefox firefox.orig
$ sudo tar -xf ./firefox-3.0.1.tar

Then issue the following command to remove the tar file from /usr/lib:
$ sudo rm firefox-3.0.1.tar
Note: You still have the original tar file over on your Desktop, so from there you should compress it and save it off somewhere along with the profile you created: mozilla.tar.bz2.
$ bzip2 firefox-3.0.1.tar
will compress the tar file into firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2

This will install the download into the proper location, however, you need to insure that your executable links as described up above in this reply are in order to allow your to press the icon for Firefox to launch the browser.

-- Tom

[RootbeaR]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

Hi lilflipper,

You ask a good question, and I have to say that my emails to mozilla about improving the quality of the installation instructions in this area for Linux seems to be have been ignored twice now (for Linux).-- Tom

Good for you Tom.

More demand, it will be supplied.

[lilflipper]

Thanks for the response, I don't think I am ready to tackle this upgrade though. I think I will just live with Firefox 2 for now.

[DoubleHelix]

These "netbook" systems are designed to be simple and user friendly. That wildly long list of complicated commands is anything but. If the word gets out that having that kind of in-depth Linux knowledge is required to do something as small as upgrade the web browser, I suspect demand will sharply decline.

[lotuseclat79]

Hi DoubleHelix,

If one checks the box in FireFox Preferences (Advanced tab) under the Update tab therein to automatically download and install the updates then it can be a nobrainer.

What I posted is basically how to do it under the hood type of knowledge - which is how I do it everytime there is a Firefox update to install (personal preference).

-- Tom