HowTo Install firefox-8.0.tar.bz2 in Linux

I have downloaded Firefox version 8.0 file from mozilla ftp/web site. The name of file is firefox-8.0.tar.bz2. How do I install firefox-8.0.tar.bz2 in Linux? What about my old bookmarks and add-ons. I am going to lose them?

Download Firefox version 8 from the Firefox download page to your /tmp directory. First, close Firefox if it's running.

Step #1: Download Firefox 8

Open a command line-terminal and go to your /tmp directory, enter:
$ cd /tmp
If you've not saved or downloaded Firefox 8, use the wget command as follows:
$ wget 'http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-8.0&os=linux&lang=en-US' -O firefox-8.0.tar.bz2
Sample outputs:

Resolving download.mozilla.org... 63.245.209.152
Connecting to download.mozilla.org|63.245.209.152|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://3347-mozilla.voxcdn.com/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/8.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-8.0.tar.bz2 [following]
--2011-11-09 15:02:11--  http://3347-mozilla.voxcdn.com/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/8.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-8.0.tar.bz2
Resolving 3347-mozilla.voxcdn.com... 72.26.222.66, 72.26.222.67
Connecting to 3347-mozilla.voxcdn.com|72.26.222.66|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 16200442 (15M) [application/x-bzip2]
Saving to: `firefox-8.0.tar.bz2'
100%[======================================>] 1,62,00,442  241K/s   in 71s
2011-11-09 15:03:22 (223 KB/s) - `firefox-8.0.tar.bz2' saved [16200442/16200442]

Step #2: Extract Tar Ball

To extract the contents of the downloaded file called firefox-8.0.tar.bz2 and install into /opt directory, enter:
# tar jxvf firefox-*.tar.bz2 -C /opt
Sample outputs:

firefox/
firefox/mozilla-xremote-client
firefox/platform.ini
firefox/libsoftokn3.chk
firefox/libnssckbi.so
firefox/hyphenation/
firefox/hyphenation/hyph_nb.dic
firefox/hyphenation/hyph_hr.dic
firefox/hyphenation/hyph_sl.dic
firefox/hyphenation/hyph_eo.
....
...
firefox/firefox
firefox/libfreebl3.chk
firefox/libfreebl3.so
firefox/libssl3.so
firefox/libnss3.so
firefox/crashreporter

Please note that if you can not install Firefox 8 in /opt directory, due to permission issue, use your own home directory as follows:
$ mkdir ~/firfox8 $ tar jxvf firefox-*.tar.bz2 -C ~/firfox8

Step #3: Start Firefox 8

Make sure you backup ~/.mozilla/ directory, enter:
$ mkdir ~/backups $ cp -avr ~/.mozilla/ ~/backups
To start Firefox, type the firefox command script in the firefox directory:
$ /opt/firefox/firefox
OR
$ ~/firefox8/firefox

A Note About Your 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.