Q. How To Install Firefox 3.0 tar.bz2 (firefox-3.0.tar.bz2 file) in Linux?
A. You won't lose any of your bookmarks or browsing history created by Firefox 2.0, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available.
Backup Existing Firefox 2.0 Settings
Just backup existing Firefox 2.0 settings:
$ mkdir ff.backup/
$ cp -avr .mozilla/ ff.backup/
Installing Firefox 3 on Linux
Just use the following instructions to download and install Firefox.
Download Firefox 3.0 for Linux
Visit official website to grab latest version. You can also use wget command to download firefox.
$ cd /tmp
$ wget 'http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=linux&lang=en-US'
Linux Install Firefox for all users
First close all running old Firefox 2.x sessions. Login as the root and type the following command to move old firefox 2 and install Firefox 3 under Linux:
# cd /opt
# mv firefox firefox.old
# cp /tmp/firefox-3.0.tar.bz2 .
# tar -jxvf firefox-3.0.tar.bz2
To start firefox, enter:
$ /opt/firefox/firefox &
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{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
Good!
I have Ubuntu 8.04 which came with FireFox 3.0 beta 5.
How do I get to install the final release by replacing the beta content ?
My /opt folder is empty !
Simply install it and always start ff from a shell prompt /opt, till Ubuntu releases updated package.
Its odd that we have to wait for a update from Ubuntu without us manually updating it directly.
Anyway, turns out, Ubuntu has already released an update to FF3 final.
Hey,
Given the “tar.bz2″ thing in the filename for “firefox-3.0.tar.bz2″, I thought I would fine Firefox’s source code compressed, rather than already-compiled-and-ready-for-execution files.
That was pretty confusing, since all the “innocent and newie” souls like me would go and do a search on Google like “installing tar.bz2 files”, and what you get are tons of Linux sites speaking of “source-code compressed stuff” which requires kind of complex commands for installation (decompressing it, compiling it, installing and so on).
What’s going on exactly? I’ll be just grateful if somebody can throw some light on this.
Thanx a lot in advance!
JohnnyLonie,
Go here to grab source code. Building package is not complex. All you need is build tools and a little experience.
Hey,
A giant thank you for your quick reply. But I’m not really interested on the source code of Firefox at the moment.
I just want to make it clear how come they’re using the “.tar.bz2″ thing for distributing already compiled binary files, when they actually -according to most of the Linux sites- in “tar.bz2″ file you should always include the source code of your program only, and not binaries.
All you gotta do is a search on google with the keywords “installing tar.bz2 files”, and -like I said- you’ll get tons of Linux sites speaking of “./configure, make install”, and other complex commands.
Now the thing is you download the firefox-3.0.tar.bz2 file, and you’ll see there are no source in it. So the question is just what’s going on?
Once again, thanx a lot in advance!
RPMs for RPM based system do exist! :P
I have followed ur advice but i got confuse when i tried to use firefox is still old version 2.0.0.8
I use fc8.
any advices?
@adhoy: you have to launch firefox on the command line giving the full path.
if you extracted the tarball in /opt/firefox
then /opt/firefox/firefox is the path to application
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3949 2008-05-29 16:21 /opt/firefox/firefox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7476 2008-05-29 16:21 /opt/firefox/firefox-bin
root@srg-desktop:/# /opt/firefox/firefox &
[1] 8348
root@srg-desktop:/# /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh: 442: /opt/firefox/firefox-bin: not found
[1]+ Exit 127 /opt/firefox/firefox
root@srg-desktop:/#
srg,
Run command as a normal user and not as root.
You guys, some of you don’t know how to talk to people who are really ignorant; do you? Anyway, the confusion is justifiable considering that the standard, at least in the Windows and Mac world – the paid worlds, that is – is that when you double-click an installer, that thing takes care of all the decompression of the archive, the locating of the old install, the upgrade and/or replacement, and the installation of needed binaries to make it all work. Now, what you guys appear to be doing is talking about how to decompress archives or how to run the executable in an archive, but what about the old installation? This download from mozilla.com appears to be a compressed complete installation that doesn’t appear to interact with the old installation or replace it. This is way confusing. Somebody said that RPMs exist for RPM based systems. What the heck are they? I go to mozilla.com and I don’t see any darn RPM of firefox 3. I don’t see a yum version. I don’t see anything but this freekin bz crap that ends up giving me a big folder of a new installation. Arrrrrrrgh.
Mongo, FYI, the above method is applicable for Linux flavours which don’t have an installer. In other cases the popular Linux flavours like Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Gentoo have a package manager bundled with them which allows you to do add, remove packages and also with AUTOMATIC DOWNLOAD i.e. you have to just configure the source repository and give a click via the GUI (or command on CUI) and your app is installed WITH DEPENDENCIES. So, unlike the idiot windows you don’t even have to download the installer!!
Mongo, and further the RPMs for Fedora is available in its repositories. Give a click in the GUI or give the following command as root -
yum install firefox
OR
yum update firefox (if firefox 2 is installed)
hey for some reason, it goes through the motions and says it downloaded and installed it, but when i start up firefox, it still says its under version 2. any suggestions?? i am running suse 10.3.
I have Firefox 2 installed on FC8 and I have tried:
yum install firefox
What I get though is the following message:
Could not find update match for firefox
No Packages marked for Update
[matias@localhost ~]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost matias]# cd /opt
[root@localhost opt]# mv firefox firefox.old
mv: cannot stat `firefox’: No such file or directory
[root@localhost opt]# cp /tmp/firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2
cp: missing destination file operand after `/tmp/firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2′
Try `cp –help’ for more information.
[root@localhost opt]# tar -jxvf firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2
tar: firefox-3.0.1.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
[root@localhost opt]# /opt/firefox/firefox &
[1] 9516
[root@localhost opt]# bash: /opt/firefox/firefox: No such file or directory
[root@localhost opt]#
[1]+ Exit 127 /opt/firefox/firefox
Soy de chile, y tengo ese problema, no se si habre hecho algun paso mal, ocupo TinyMe 2008.
si podrian ayudarme porfavor
What he said was that he is from chile, and he has that problem and he doesn’t know if he did something wrong.
I get the same thing he does, and I am running Ubuntu 7.04 feisty. Any advice would be wonderful. Thanks!
Well it works for me but I miss the fist 3 comands because didnt work as I spected, I just uncompresed the archive and replace it instead the firefox.old, then I run al the ‘tar’ comand and the next one, ok good luck to all:
cd /opt
mv firefox firefox.old
cp /tmp/firefox-3.tar.bz2 .
tar -jxvf firefox-3.tar.bz2
$ /opt/firefox/firefox &
“SUNT”
Perfect! Been trying to figure this out forever.
my problem is this…
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libjemalloc.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
You need xulrunner and xulrunner-gnome support packages. Under Debian / Ubuntu Linux try following to install the same:
sudo apt-get install xulrunner-1.9 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-supportUnder RHEL / RedHat / Fedora / Centos, use yum
yum install xulrunnerOnce installed you should see file under /usr/lib64/xulrunner-1.9/libjemalloc.so (64bit) or /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libjemalloc.so (32bit) or /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.0.3/libjemalloc.so (debian/ubuntu linux)
HTH
hello,
can anyone just post the simple directions on how to install the firefox 3.03 to ubuntu 8.04
?
this is too complex for newbies like us! thanks!
Hello,
Can u tell me why when I type: /opt/firefox/firefox &
I get:root@gonzalo:/opt# Error: no display specified
Please tell me why…
Thank you!
I have machine with a red-hat linux and no firefox on it (only mozilla works)
today, I downloaded firefox-3.0.tar.bz2 and followed your instructions:
# tar -jxvf firefox-3.0.tar.bz2
$ /opt/firefox/firefox &
This gave the following error message:
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Please let me know what I should do
thanks in advance,
V. Ravindran
[root@xslinux /]# cd opt
[root@xslinux opt]# ls -l
总用量 0
[root@xslinux opt]# /firefox/firefox &
[1] 8674
[root@xslinux opt]# /firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries:
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or director
y
I have a pc with redhad 9.0.when i install firefox3.0 as your instuction .show error as fofllow:
[root@xslinux /]# cd opt
[root@xslinux opt]# ls -l
总用量 0
[root@xslinux opt]# /firefox/firefox &
[1] 8674
[root@xslinux opt]# /firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries:
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or director
y
—Yum installing…
[root@localhost /]# yum install firefox
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Package firefox-3.0.2-1.fc9.x86_64 already installed and latest version
Nothing to do
—But I want to update my firefox as 3.0.5… and nothing happened
—As for the directions…
[root@localhost ~]# cd /opt
[root@localhost opt]# mv firefox firefox.old
mv: cannot stat `firefox’: No such file or directory
—Can somebody explain this instructions in a matter that it can easily be comprehend.. Anyway the “firefox” named file under the firefox folder in the firefox-3.0.5.tar.bz2 can be clicked and opens up a firefox browser.. Does this mean the firefox-3.0.5.tar.bz2 is new installer to be download..
I am a newbie, and find this discussion very interesting as we can see different angles of the problem as well as the solution. It started with “How to install Firefox(current version) in Linux”. This also means that, if I have an older version of Firefox, I want to UPGRADE to the current version, and if I don’t have an older version of Firefox, then I simply want to INSTALL the current version. Also, Linux has different flavors (Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE etc.), so is the directory structure same for all. Like can I follow the above method (cd /opt …) in all cases? Can anybody help (Upgrade, Install)??
I’m running RHEL4 Update 4 and I’m running into the same problem as other users above:
# tar -jxvf firefox-3.0.tar.bz2
$ /opt/firefox/firefox &
This gave the following error message:
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
I understand I need to have the following packages/libraries installed in order for this version of Firefox to work:
GTK+ 2.10 or higher
GLib 2.12 or higher
Pango 1.14 or higher
X.Org 1.0 or higher
Is there somewhere on the internet I can download these from? I don’t have yum installed.
Thank you!
Fedora8_64, just ran “yum update firefox” as root in a terminal window. Everything appeared to work except I find I’m still running FireFox 2! I’d love to use Linux, I don’t expect it to be ‘friendly’ like Windows, but trying to figure out the most basic things (like upgrading software) is like pulling teeth (and I’ve been looking off & on for about a year). Vivek, your directions above seem to be for running FireFox from a command line in a terminal window. How do I launch FireFox from the window (Fedora) I/F? Thanx in advance -
Extract the bz2 anywhere you are comfortable with.
Add a link to the Panel with the firefox icon……..Should work like gem…
NOTE: Avoid using old Firefox when this is done……
I am newbie.
problem:
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries:libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: connot open shared object file:No such file or directory.
question:
what should i do ?
THKS
hi dears,
im a fresher in linux.my os(linux)doesnt support firfox now.i just want to reinstall .i downloaded firefox whixh is in tar format.anywas am not able to install and solve the problem.i hope u can help me.and i want to know any other browsers for linux
Here there when i try to run the instruction below i got this one
stm9999:/root# /opt/firefox/firefox &
[1] 5388
stm9999:/root# /opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Pls help.. Thanks
pango (http://www.pango.org) is absent in your system
Dear all
after extracting the archive follow:
1. rename the firefox folder located in /uer/lib/fir…
2. copy the folder u just extracted “….bz2″ to /usr/lib
3. the folders /usr/bin/firefox and /usr/lib/firefox are links to the previous folder u just renamed. delete this link. delete these 2 folders and create new links to the the new folder u have just copied by using the command:
#ln -s /usr/lib/fire…. /usr/bin/firefox
#ln -s /usr/lib/firefox
This procedure worked for me in Slackware.
Good luck