How to install firefox-2.0.tar.gz in Linux

by Vivek Gite · 36 comments

Q. I have downloaded firefox file from mozilla web site to my Linux desktop system. The name of file is firefox-2.0.tar.gz. How do I install firefox-2.0.tar.gz in Fedora Core Linux? Please provide me step by step instructions for the same. What about my old bookmarks and add-ons. I am going to lose them?

A. Update: FireFox version 3.0 has been released and it is recommended that you install Firefox 3.0 under any Linux distribution.

Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source, cross-platform graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of volunteers. Installing Firefox 2 will overwrite your existing installation of Firefox. You won't lose any of your bookmarks or browsing history, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available.

Installing firefox on Linux

Just use following instructions to download and install Firefox.

Download firefox to your Linux desktop

=> Visit this site to download firefox

Firefox 2.0 installation - Just untar file and install it

Let us say you would like to install firefox in your own home directory called /home/tom/firefox
$ mkdir /home/tom/firefox

Change directory:
$ cd /home/tom/firefox

Copy your files to /home/tom/firefox and untar it:

$ cp /home/tom/Desktop/firefox-2.0.0.11.tar.gz .
$ tar -zxvf firefox-2.0.0.11.tar.gz

And you are done. Start firefox:
$ /home/tom/firefox/firefox &

How do I install firefox for everyone?

Install Firefox in /opt directory. Login as root user:
# cd /opt
# mkdir firefox
# cd firefox
# cp /home/tom/Desktop/firefox-2.0.0.11.tar.gz .
# tar -zxvf firefox-2.0.0.11.tar.gz

To start firefox:
$ /opt/firefox/firefox &

You can also create a shortcut from your own desktop :)

What about my bookmarks and browsing history - Am I going to lose them?

You won't lose any of your bookmarks or browsing history, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available.

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{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Hassan 12.07.06 at 9:01 am

Sir ,

I just install Firefox2.0 in my linux machine.
Now i can access Fierefox by giving the command like
” /opt/firefox/firefox ” ,
can i access firefox by the command ” firefox ” only? if it is possible how ?
can i create a shortcut on desktop ?

Thanks,
Hassan

2 nixcraft 12.07.06 at 10:41 am

Hassan,

You can create Desktop short by right clicking on Desktop > Create New > File > Link to Application

Next Select Application Tab > Type Description and Comment as FireFox and Command as /opt/firefox/firefox

Click Ok to save and you are done. This is for KDE desktop.

> access firefox by the command ” firefox ” only

Open your .bash_profile file in your hone directory and type command:
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/firefox

Save and close file.

Hope this helps

3 Danish Godwin 04.11.07 at 6:07 am

How to install the tar.gz files or .exe files on linux. Please sent the details as soon

4 nixcraft 04.11.07 at 6:19 pm

You can not install .exe file on Linux. It is MS – windows specific file.

To install .tar.gz (tar ball):
tar -zxvf file.tar.gz
cd file/
./configure
make
make install

Also look for README or INSTALL file

5 george whitmore 04.27.07 at 4:07 pm

Thanks…
I did the same thing in as described here in trying to Install Thunderbird v2.0. That failed. Don’t I need to be in a different folder to install then my home/gpw/download folder?

tar -zxvf file.tar.gz
cd file/
./configure FAILED
make FAILED
make install FAILED

Thanks

6 nixcraft 04.27.07 at 7:49 pm

george,

This information is for Firefox binary system only. You just need to unpack using tar command and type ./thunderbird to run it

HTH

7 george whitmore 04.27.07 at 11:09 pm

Thanks for you help. Works fine… Question though: here are 2 examples of tar ball files that needed to be handled differently. What should I be looking for so I could find this myself?

Thanks again, one more step for me into the Linux world…

8 bechir 06.08.07 at 8:35 am

J’ai juste installer firefox 2.0.0.4 .

J’ai suivis le démarche ,mais je n’arrive pas à voir la nouvelle version.

toujours il m’affiche l’ancienne version.

merci sur vos aides.

9 nixcraft 06.08.07 at 12:50 pm

Vous devez dactylographier le plein chemin tel que /opt/firefox/firefox

10 kevin 06.19.07 at 1:21 pm

Argh! Downloaded Firefox-2.0.0.4.tar.gz, followed the instructions, but trying to run firefox I get…
error while loading shared libraries:libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Using Fedora 4

11 baLaJi 07.17.07 at 1:55 pm

hi all,

i’m using fedora6. by default it has got firefox 1.5.0.7 built in. i downloaded firefox-2.0.0.4-tar.gz file from the mozilla site. but i couldn’t get any instructions on how to install it successfully. almost all the instructions i could find tell to copy the gz file in some folder and do a tar -zvxf on it. done. so i installed it in /usr/local/bin/firefox. but when i execute ./firefox thru konsole, it shows this error:

./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

if i execute ./firefox-bin it shows this:

./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libmozjs.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

double-clicking either thru file manager doesn’t give any response.

please help as i need to use firefox 2.

thanx in advance.
baLaJi

12 baLaJi 07.17.07 at 1:58 pm

i forgot one thing. if i start firefox 2 thru this:

./firefox &
(as given in installation directions for linux)

then i get this error message.

[2] 3215
[1] Done firefox
[root@localhost firefox]# ./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[2]+ Exit 127 ./firefox

and when i double click on firefox it opens up in kedit.

13 vivek 07.17.07 at 2:19 pm

Hi,

You need to install missing binary files, you must install following file using net or from CD/DVD:

yum install libstdc++
14 baLaJi 07.17.07 at 2:29 pm

hi vivek,

i did yum install libstdc++ from the net. but i still get this error msg:

/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

this happened even after i rebooted linux. i just don’t seem to get the problem. i would appreciate if you or anyone else could help me out.

thanx,
baLaJi

15 vivek 07.17.07 at 7:13 pm

I think you better get new distro such as Ubuntu it comes with all latest software and no such problem. Fedora core is kind of beta software for RHEL.

16 baLaJi 07.18.07 at 11:58 am

thanx vivek.

i got over the problem. there were more dependencies involved. so i found out the compatibility issue. and i did

yum install compat-libstdc++-33

i didn’t install the tar.gz file i downloaded previusly. rather i did

yum install firefox

which directly downloaded the firefox-2.0.0.4.tar. gz and installed it. but i still can’t figure out why firefox 1.5 still exists in my system when i didn’t do an update? and i can run it too. anyone can tell?

thanx,
baLaJi

17 vivek 07.18.07 at 2:52 pm

baLaJi,

May be some sort of conflict, you can just forget about old version and use latest one :)

Glad to know it is all sorted out :)

18 Balaji 07.21.07 at 10:49 am

hello everyone,

this forum’s been dormant for a while i guess. let me dehibernate (pardon my pun) it.

i’ve two partitions in my sata one booting xp and the other fedora 6. i wanted to access my xp data booting into linux. so as root, i did the required ‘mount’ (mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/c -t ntfs-3g -r -o umask=0222) in /etc/fstab. i’ve a user account which i log into when i’m using linux normally. now my problem is i’m not able to access the xp partition thru this. with root it’s fine but i can’t be logging in as root.

early help would be appreciated.

thanx in advance,
baLaJi

19 Jacky 07.22.07 at 4:43 am

Download firefox from the website, then run
tar -zxvf firefox-2.0.tar.gz
cd firefox
sudo chmod -x firefox-bin
sudo firefox-bin

After you typed in this into command line, the prompt may say that you dont have right to write…

Just ignore it, now you can just simply create an icon on desktop.

At command field, type /directory/firefox/firefox
then you can double-click it to run new version firefox.

Hope this helps. Cheers!

20 murali 07.23.07 at 10:47 pm

When i run after sudo chmod -x firefox.bin, sudo firefox.bin it says that sudo: firefox-bin: command not found

21 kannan 08.19.07 at 11:22 am

hello,
i am unable to install firefox 2.0.0.6 in ubuntu.i followed the above procedure,but fails.extracted the .tar.gz files but don’t know how to install….

please help

thanks

22 debal das 11.19.07 at 9:35 am

1)How to instal mozila fire fox in red hat linux ?
2)How i share internet commection in my red hat linux server to windows xp machine?

23 Herman 05.18.08 at 1:21 pm

Hello All,

I followd your instructions, but it will not work i get the next message;

/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

there are two firefox and firefox-bin in the folder, both give the same result
I can not start Firefox

can you help me

sincerely herman

24 vivek 05.18.08 at 1:40 pm

Herman,

Install libstdc++5 using your distros installation tool such as apt-get or yum

25 msd 06.20.08 at 6:05 pm

For guys who have problems with installing Firefox 2 on older version of your Linux, note that you usually need to update your Linux (SuSe in my case) version first.

26 Sergio Luiz Araujo Silva 07.17.08 at 4:54 pm

see: UNIX tips: Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-badunixhabits.html

tar zxvf package.tar.gz -C /opt

27 roy 12.12.08 at 10:55 am

how to instal tar.gz file in ubuntu 8.10 and how to instal any software in ubuntu 8.10

28 Ubuntu4lifer 01.16.09 at 1:07 pm

what do you guys mean with ./configure? Could you maybe put in a example?

29 Emma Pantoja 01.17.09 at 5:51 am

I like firefox it gives me what I need

30 safdar azam 04.22.09 at 6:37 am

I just want to know. how can i install firefox in my linux machine plz give me some advise thanks.

31 michael 07.25.09 at 9:17 pm

u rocked man. it works.

32 Rain 08.28.09 at 3:42 am

Hi,

I’m very new with Linux and I got it along with my Asus EEE. Can you guys help me? I want to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 but I just save it to disk and now I don’t know where and how to open it. It just goes to my documents and I don’t know how to run it. I need a step by step procedure. Hope you guys could help me.

33 gccradioscience 09.08.09 at 11:50 pm

Same problem here, I hope someone will come out with a easier way to install these files and more safely. I see that there are newbies here and yes I am one that just installed Ubuntu 9.04 and Linux is like a whole different world. Things are different here. 1. No nasties, no cookies, no donuts, no spyware, no snoopware. Since I used Linux vs Windows, I think Microsleuth made spyware, and adware, and cookies, and crumbs and thats when we say that’s it I give up, I am installing Linux! We all need to take the time and educate ourselves and learn this OS language. One day I will get the hang of this. I just have to get to the library and read up on it. We all need to get prepared for new things coming out that would be worse than cookies called donuts. A data piece that would be like a cookie even worse, it would spys on you through “the donut hole”. Linux indeed saved my netbook from complete damage due to the computer bug ever called the missing windows root/system32/hal.dll bug. That one was created by Microsoft. This malware keeps windows from booting up and also disables the DOS prompt feature.

34 Harry 11.12.09 at 10:59 pm

Long and numerous command lines is the reason why Linux will NEVER come even halfway close to Windows when it comes to popularity.

What’s so difficult about making an installer-script for Linux ?

Die, Linux. Die.
Or…well….it will kill itself, anyway.

35 Scan 12.23.09 at 11:25 pm

Hi all,

I got the file firefox-3.5.6.tar.bz2 form the site, I make “gzip firefox-3.5.6.tar.bz2″ and I got the firefox-3.5.6.tar.bz2.gz,
but when I make “tar -zxvf firefox-3.5.6.tar.bz2.gz” its respond with:

tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

maybe I do something wrong? Maybe the file is xxxxxx.tar.bz2.gz and about it I have this message?
Help me please. :-)

36 Vivek Gite 12.24.09 at 4:53 am

Run
tar -jxvf firefox-3.5.6.tar.bz2

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