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

Good!

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

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!

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!

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?

-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:/#

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, 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)

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

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!

Perfect! Been trying to figure this out forever.

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-support
Under RHEL / RedHat / Fedora / Centos, use yum
yum install xulrunner
Once 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 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!

[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’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!

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……

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

pango (http://www.pango.org) is absent in your system

sir,
plz tell i am using Redhat 3 and i dont have firefox in my Pc that’s why i am able to access hotmail.gmail.and orkut plz how to install firefox in system. give me some comman command.

I want to thank “Ghooma” for the example that opened my eyes to this and helped me understand what any of this means.

Everyone, I will try to break this down to a newbie level since I’m a complete newbie myself, so some of my explanations may not be official “linux” answers.

Please forgive any misteps but I’m trying to understand this process and explain it at the same time.

I’m using “Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11″.

I will give the steps listed by “Ghooma” and then try to explain what was done in each one so that you won’t feel as though you’re just pushing buttons with no idea of what you’re accomplishing.

Please make sure that you have closed all running firefox browsers before trying any of these steps.

1. Rename the “firefox” folder that is located in “/usr/lib/”.
1exp: This seems to be pretty close to the program files folder in windows and we’re renaming the folder that all of the shortcuts currently point to when you open firefox. I renamed mine to “firefox OLD”

2. Copy the folder you just extracted to “/usr/lib”
2exp: I just downloaded “firefox-3.5.3.tar.bz2″ and then ran the archiver tool “Ark” (Or file-roller) and extracted the compressed file into a new folder. I renamed the new folder “firefox” and it now contains all of my newly uncompressed files. Next I copied the newly named “firefox” folder from the downloaded and extracted location over to “/usr/lib”. This means that our firefox shortcuts will still be pointing to the same place but will be looking at our new “firefox” folder instead.

3. The folder “/usr/bin” contains a symbolic link to the original firefox file named “firefox”. ***NOTE***(This Is Where It Gets Tricky!!!)
Delete this symbolic link(“/usr/bin/firefox”) and also delete the folder “/usr/lib/firefox OLD” If you’re nervous here then just move them someplace where you can easily locate them again so the you can put the originals back if you want to.
3exp: “/usr/bin/firefox” is the symbolic link that all of the firefox shortcuts in the system point to when you click them, and they point directly to the “/usr/bin/firefox/firefox” (now “/usr/bin/firefox OLD/firefox”) shell script which launches firefox. Since we have renamed the old version and copied a newer version into its place, “Ghooma” suggests that we delete references to the old versions and get ready to make a new symbolic link pointing to the new version of firefox.

***NOTE*** My old links pointed to a file name “/usr/lib/firefox/firefox.sh” but in my new firefox folder the file was named “firefox” instead of “firefox.sh”!!! PAY ATTENTION!!!

Your old and new links will all stop working if you do not tell your symbolic link the correct filename in the new firefox installation!!!

I’m giving 2 extra versions of “Ghooma’s” next line of code because they both work depending on which scenario you have so please pay attention.

4. “Ghooma’s Original Code” ln -s /usr/lib/firefox /usr/bin/firefox (Will Probably Not Work!!!) (Sorry Ghooma)
4a. “My code” ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
4b. “My code variation” ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/firefox.sh /usr/bin/firefox
***NOTE*** YOU ONLY NEED TO RUN 1 LINE OF CODE BUT MAKE SURE THAT IT IS CORRECT FOR YOUR SYSTEM!!!!

4exp: This statement needs to be run from a command prompt. I ran as su.
This statement makes a symbolic link in the “/usr/bin/” folder and the link is named “firefox” (“/usr/bin/firefox”)
This symbolic link points to the file “firefox” OR “firefox.sh” located in the new folder that we copied earlier (“/usr/lib/firefox”)
The reason for multiple examples is because the file that launches firefox is a shell script file and may or may not have the “.sh” suffix but I’m almost certain that it will be nested deeper than the first 4. example.

***NOTE*** YOU NEED TO LOOK INTO THE FOLDER THAT WAS CREATED WHEN YOU EXTRACTED YOUR DOWNLOAD AND MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE USING THE PRECISE FILENAME!!! (This is the same folder that we copied to “/usr/lib/firefox”)

I clicked my firefox shortcuts immediately after performing this trick and they all open with the new version of firefox.

Once again thanks to Ghooma for shedding light on this and I’m hoping that by being a little verbose that I may help someone else start appreciating linux.

Harold M.

Dear all.
How can I install firefox3.5.7 in linux

Hi. Can someone help out a Linux Freespire newbie with installing firefox-3.6.tar.bz2, which was downloaded to my Desktop? I’d really appreciate it! Thanx so much!