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Firefox is a free, award-winning web browser from the Mozilla Corporation. This “recipe” will tell you how to install the newest version of the Firefox in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron).

Update: If you are using Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), Firefox 3 preBeta 3 is now in Ubuntu’s universe repository, so there is no need to enable additional repositories. Simply run “sudo apt-get install firefox-3.0 firefox-3.0-gnome-support” with the universe repository enabled to install it.

Requirements:

• administrator privledges (able to use the “sudo” command)

Instructions:

• There are two ways to install Firefox 3 in Ubuntu 8.04. You can either enable a third-party repository that contains it or you can download the official Mozilla build from their site. I prefer to use the repository, because then Firefox 3 will be updated along with my other programs, but if you do not trust third-party repositories, then downloading the official Mozilla build works too.
• Note: This “recipe” was written for Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), but may (or may not) work for other versions or distributions.

Third-party repository

To install Firefox 3 Beta 2 using a third party repository, you can execute the following steps:

1. Open a terminal and open your sources.list:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Paste the following into that file:
## FABIEN TASSIN (UBULETTE) PPA REPOSITORY - Contains firefox 3
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu hardy main

3. Now save and close Gedit, and then reload package information:
sudo apt-get update

4. Finally install the packages:
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.0 firefox-3.0-gnome-support

5. If you wish to use plugins* from the repositories in Firefox 3, you will need to make a link from your Firefox 3 plugins directory to the Firefox 2 plugins directory:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/* /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins/

6. To complete the installation, stop any running instances of Firefox and then start Firefox 3:
firefox-3.0

7. For information on getting add-ons to work in Firefox 3, see this post

Official Mozilla build

To install Firefox 3 Beta 2 using an official build from Mozilla, you can execute the following steps:

1. Download Firefox 3 here. Save the file to your desktop.

2. Next, extract the tarball file to the /opt folder
cd ~/Desktop
sudo tar jxvf firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2 -C /opt/

3. If you wish to use plugins* from the repositories in Firefox 3, you will need to make a link from your Firefox 3 plugins directory to the Firefox 2 plugins directory:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/* /opt/firefox-3.0/plugins

4. To complete the installation, stop any running instances of Firefox and then start Firefox 3:
firefox-3.0

5. For information on getting add-ons to work in Firefox 3, see this post

* At the time of my writing this, the Totem Mozilla plugin is incompatible with Firefox 3. I have yet to discover a workaround (besides using another multimedia plugin, such as the mplayer plugin).

Tags: internet