Archive for the 'Tutorial' Category

Ubuntu Breezy 5.10 users search for installing Firefox 1.5 on their boxes. So, I thought of writing a tutorial. I am writing this using the information in the Ubuntu Wiki. There are a few points to note before installing Firefox 1.5.

• Don’t remove the Ubuntu version of Firefox, otherwise, you will break a few packages
• You will no longer get automatic updates through repositories, but the auto-updater built in firefox is enough
• The Totem video plugin doesn’t work. I don’t use this particular plugin. Anyway you can install the package mozilla-mplayer.
• You need package libstdc++5 installed.

  sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

• There is a bug in Firefox which causes an error dialog to be displayed, each time FF starts up saying Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration. Do this for a work around:

  sudo mkdir -p /opt/firefox/extensions/talkback@mozilla.org
  sudo touch /opt/firefox/extensions/talkback@mozilla.org/chrome.manifest

Installing

• I would suggest you backup your bookmarks and settings by

  cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default
  mkdir ~/Desktop/ffsettingscp bookmarks.html cert8.db cookies.txt formhistory.dat \
  key3.db signons.txt history.dat  mimeTypes.rdf ~/Desktop/ffsettings

• Download firefox-1.5.tar.gz and change to the directory you downloaded.
• Extract it to /opt/firefox

  sudo tar -C /opt -xvzf firefox-1.5.tar.gz

• Link to your plugins and remove totem-mozilla as it doesn’t work with FF 1.5

  cd /opt/firefox/plugins/sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/*
  sudo rm libtotem_mozilla.*

• Change to your home directory and rename your old profile(just as backup)

  cd ~mv .mozilla .mozilla.ubuntu

• To ensure it is used as the default version, modify the symbolic link in /usr/bin

  sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/firefoxsudo
  ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

  The dpkg-divert command will move the original system-wide /usr/bin/firefox to a new name. The ln command will place a symbolic link to the newly installed firefox in /usr/bin.

• Try the new firefox by typing firefox
• Restore your old data

  cd ~/Desktop/ffsettingsmv * ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default

• Restore your search plugins

  sudo cp -i --reply=no /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/* /opt/firefox/searchplugins/
  sudo cp -i --reply=no ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/search/* /opt/firefox/searchplugins/

• To ensure that other programs use the 1.5 version and not the older 1.0.7 version, goto Preferences>Preferred Applications in the System Menu. Under the Web Browser tab, choose custom and enter firefox %s

I hope this tutorial would really help many in installing Firefox and thereby enabling them to view the web in a totally different view. If anyone got any problem in installing Firefox or has got a better way, please discuss here.

Technorati Tags: firefox, ubuntu, ubuntu linux, firefox 1.5, linux

Applications for GNU/Linux are available in various formats like source(.tar.gz), deb, rpm. In my opinion Debian’s package management is far superior than others as it automatically checks for dependancy packages and installs them too(there is yum forRedHat, but I don’t use RedHat).
You can install/update/remove packages using synaptic package manager. Open synaptic from System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager.
You can find the interface easy to use. Just select your package at the upper-right corner and click the tick box. Synaptic automatically installs the dependency packages too if required.
So you may be asking from where does synaptic install the software. There are various repositories on the net that is used by synaptic to install or update the system. Usually we use the command line tools to install them, but synaptic gives a easy to use interface.
You can view the repositories or add new ones by going to the Settings>Repositories menu and a list of repositories are shown. Click settings and tick the Show Disabled software sources.
You can now see checkboxes next to the repositories.
Enable the Universe repository. You can also enable the Multiverse and the Universe Security updates repository. Save the changes.
You need to update the packages to obtain the list of packages in the repository.
After this, you can install the packages.

You can also add new Repositories. For eg
deb http://www.grawert.net/ubuntu/ warty universe
Here the various fields are
deb – neaning it is a binary
http://www.grawert.net/ubuntu/ – URi(Uniform Resource Identifier) which is the location of the repository
warty – the release name
universe – section name. There can be several sections seperated by a space.

Hope you have got a nice overview of the package management in Ubuntu.