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How To Install firefox-3.0.tar.bz2 in Linux

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: June 17, 2008]

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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Discussion on This FAQ

  1. Weverton Says:

    Good!

  2. Anjanesh Says:

    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 !

  3. vivek Says:

    Simply install it and always start ff from a shell prompt /opt, till Ubuntu releases updated package.

  4. Anjanesh Says:

    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.

  5. JohnnyLonie Says:

    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!

  6. vivek Says:

    JohnnyLonie,

    Go here to grab source code. Building package is not complex. All you need is build tools and a little experience.

  7. JohnnyLonie Says:

    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!

  8. Nilesh Says:

    RPMs for RPM based system do exist! :P

  9. adhoy Says:

    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?

  10. Nilesh Says:

    @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

  11. srg Says:

    -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:/#

  12. vivek Says:

    srg,

    Run command as a normal user and not as root.

  13. Mongo Says:

    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.

  14. S. Nilesh Says:

    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!!

  15. S. Nilesh Says:

    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)

  16. Adam Says:

    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.

  17. Javier Says:

    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

  18. Matías Says:

    [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

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