A few days ago I posted the update information for the New Firefox 3.5 Release. However, it’s a little different when it comes to updating Firefox in Ubuntu Linux. In Windows, you basically click the “Check for Updates” button in the “Help” menu. However, in Ubuntu, there’s different methods of updating, unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just clicking “Check for Updates” or it’s not included in the regular Ubuntu updates until it hits the repositries since it requires a lot of QA testing due to the dependancies it requires, which might break other programs that are using the same dependencies.
Below are a few methods to update Firefox to 3.5 in Ubuntu:
1 – Manual installation of fresh final releases from Mozilla
Note: I recommend reading the original article at http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/firefox, specially if you already installed previous versions on the /opt directory. Nevertheless, if this is the first time you install Firefox manually, then you can follow the simplified instructions below.
For manual installation of fresh released final versions of Firefox, you can download the current Mozilla release version from Get Firefox site, saving it on your home directory, then run the commands below:
cp -R ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.backup
sudo tar -jxvf firefox-*.tar.bz2 -C /opt
rm firefox-*.tar.bz2
sudo mv /opt/firefox/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins.backup
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins
sudo dpkg-divert –divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu –rename /usr/bin/firefox
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
Reverting Changes
To revert these changes and use Firefox 3.0.x again, run the following command:
sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox && sudo dpkg-divert –rename –remove /u
sr/bin/firefox && sudo rm -r /opt/firefox
2 – Automatic installation of fresh final releases from Mozilla
You can install fresh final releases and keep updating them using the Ubuntuzilla. It’s easy to install this way and also to remove it. I would highly recommend this method over the others, Ubuntuzilla can also check for future updates and install them at your request.
Download and install the .deb package for your architecture here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/
Update Firefox by running the following command once installed:
ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox
Follow the onscreen instructions and restart Firefox!
3 – Shiretoko
Shiretoko 3.5 final release is available in the Universe repositories so you can install it clicking here or through the Add/Remove manager or using the command below:
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5
Shiretoko is Firefox without the branding, which means it won’t display Firefox name or logo. Nevertheless is the same software. This package is maintained by the community, not the Ubuntu developers. When you search for Shiretoko in the Add/Menu browser it says it is a Beta version. But don’t worry, it has been already updated to final release. This is also a good way of installing the new Firefox, however, a lot (or most) users, want the Firefox branding.
For any further information on Firefox optimization and troubleshooting, visit this great thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1193567
UPDATE:
There are some cases where Flash doesn’t work in Firefox 3.5. This is because Firefox 3.5 reads the plug-ins from:
usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
Simply, copy over the file, libflashplayer.so from:
usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins
over to
usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
You may need sudo privileges:
gksu nautilus
Then just restart Firefox and should all be fixed!
