How to install Firefox 5 on Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Opensuse,

. or any other Linux distribution.

This howto explains how to install Firefox 5 RC on Linux distros, without replacing your current Firefox installation.

Firefox 5 Release Candidate has been released on June 16, 2011.
The final release date is set to June 21.

More information on Firefox release dates, beta, aurora and nightlies on the official releases wiki.

 

A. Install Firefox 5 in 5 easy steps

1. Download

Download the RC from the official channels page:
www.mozilla.com/firefox/channels/

A 64 bit build is also available in the x86_64 directory of Mozilla's FTP.

This how-to supposes that the downloaded file is saved in the "Downloads" directory situated in your home directory.

2. Extract

The downloaded file is a compressed .tar.bz2 archive. In case you want to Learn more on these extensions: tar, bzip2.

To extract this juicy archive, open the Downloads directory. Look for a file named firefox-5.0b3.tar.bz2, right-click on it and select "extract here".

Alternatively, you can extract the archive from the command line:

cd ~/Downloads/

tar xjf firefox-5.0b3.tar.bz2

For those interested, here are the tar  arguments used in the command:
x : eXtract
j : deal with bzipped file
f : read from a file (rather than a tape device)

The .tar.bz2 archive can now be deleted.

3. Move to /opt

External programs like LibreOffice, Google Chrome, Adobe reader, ... are all installed in the /opt directory. If you want more info about why, check out these two links:
Where to install my products on linux?
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

If you already had a previous Firefox version installed in the /opt directory, remove it with the following command:

sudo rm -r /opt/firefox

Now move the firefox directory – which was created in your Downloads folder during extraction – to /opt:

sudo mv firefox /opt/firefox

4. Set up symbolic links

Depending on you usage pattern, follow the instructions for case 1 OR for case 2.

Case 1: you want to use Firefox 5 Beta as you default browser:

"Backup" the old Firefox launcher: sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-old Create a symbolic link pointing to the new Firefox version: sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox No need to update your icons/shortcuts, they should now launch the new version of Firefox. Your old Firefox version is still installed. If you want to use it, run firefox-old in a terminal or create shortcuts/icons referring to firefox-old.

Case 2: you want to keep using your "old" Firefox by default:

Create a symbolic link pointing to the new Firefox version: sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox4 Launch the newly installed Firefox by running firefox4 in a terminal, or create shortcuts/icons referring to firefox4.

5. Updates & Final

Firefox 5 will manage its own updates independently of your system's package manager, an download subsequent beta releases.

There will be no need to repeat the whole "procedure"... Enjoy Firefox 5!

B. Ubuntu's case, Linux Mint and Debian

1. Ubuntu: Avoid ubuntu-mozilla-daily ppa!

Many howtos on this subject will tell you to install Firefox pre-versions through Mozilla's ppa ubuntu-mozilla-daily.

Using this ppa will not only install the latest Firefox nightly build, used to be called "minefield" - updated daily! It will also update your current Firefox and Thunderbird to test versions.

These testing versions are not meant to be stable or usable.

→ Avoid this ppa unless you know exactly what you're doing!

2. The stable Firefox ppa: mozillateam/firefox-stable

The firefox-stable ppa will replace your current Firefox installation (probably 3.6.x) with the latest stable release of Firefox 4. Simply run these two commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

On my machines, these builds of Firefox were notably slower than the non-ppa official builds.

4. Linux Mint 11, and Debian 6 "Squeeze", ...

This howto has been tested with success on the following distributions:

Debian 6 "Squeeze"
Linux Mint 10 "Julia"
Linux Mint 11 "Katya"
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" (Long Term Support, until April 2013)
Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" (until until April 2012)

this installation procedure is reliable and should work with a wide range of distributions. Please share your experience with OpenSuse and Fedora in the comments.

C. Uninstall/remove Firefox 5

Remove the Firefox directory:

sudo rm -r /opt/firefox

You also should consider changing back or removing symbolic links which pointed to the old Firefox directory. Change back:

sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox-old /usr/bin/firefox

Or remove the firefox4 symlink:

sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox4

By Technocrat – June 2011

Updated on June 16: Firefox 5 RC1.

This article has been linked on Tuxmachines, Ubuntu News, Debian News,LXer.com and some more...

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