Install Firefox 3.5 On Ubuntu With One Command

@WayneHb: The profile box has been around. You can choose to have that appear with the -P switch, or select Don't Ask next time. Firefox automatically uses the same profile for new installs (too late for that, it seems). Did you even click "Delete my files and settings too"? If not, you might be able to get it back by going to your User dir.

I think your title is misleading. This is not a single command. First you use wget and then a pipe and then the command tar. First you get it with a command and then you open/untar it with another command. You may have done it with one line but that can bd done on just about any linux distro. Me, I don't use ubuntu and I use firefox to download the tar version and then use xarchiver to open it. Wow, did I just do it in one command????

ElaineEmpusa

What some of you obviously do not understand is that linux is for users who DO NOT MIND USING THE COMMAND LINE. It is not for the average user. It is for users who want maximum flexibility.
Yes, there are others who say it is only a matter of time before Linux takes over the desktop, but they are wrong.
I don't want my beloved Linux to be so simplified that I cannot just have one command line to type in and get the latest Firefox. I want things the way they are. For those who don't MS and Apple make excellent OS's and you should try those.

nobodyzhome

I went on trying the installation using ubuntuzilla. And it worked. It is still a quick fix solution though. But you can change the system back to pre-installed state easily. http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/193/installing-firefox-3-5-in-ubuntu-the-easy-way

SooratGoldsboro

It you set your sources in Ubuntu to allow Proposed Updates then FF3.5 is available :)

Was: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1b4pre) Gecko/20090401 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Shiretoko/3.5b4pre - Build ID:20090401172919

Now: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090701 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Shiretoko/3.5 - Build ID: 20090701021524

Remember to then turn proposed off :)

SilverWave

Are we not going to see an official version until Karmic's released?

@p_to_the_izzle: I had this problem as well, and the solution that worked on mine (Ubuntu Jaunty) was to put libflashplayer.so in .mozilla/plugins in home.

In case it's broken on anyone else's.

@Julius Seizure. (Mourning Mollie Sugden): D'oh - thought Forget this Site would be in the Tools menu. Yeah, yeah, I know: RTOHL (Read the online help, loser)

Installed last night - used article and it worked flawlessly.

A few add-ons aren't compatible (auto-copy) but nothing dramatic.

Page loads seem a little faster - I have a few regular "graphic hog" sites and they're more speedy.

Greasemonkey FLIES! There are a couple of site that are so badly laid out I rearrange them completely with GM. (No, not THIS one. Silly.) Usually there's a 1-2 second wait for my script to finish. Now it's blink of an eye quick.

36 hours later, no crashes. Privacy mode is fine but I can't seem to find "Forget this site". Hmmm

I don't recall ordering effete smugness for dinner...

AlinaChryses

This is my single biggest gripe with Ubuntu. Virtually everything in their repos is horrible outdated. Could anyone recommend to me a distro that keeps their repos bleeding edge?

@ShuchismitaDoris:
That's what I did. I use Mint 7 64 bit. I did have a problem with flash not working until I put libflashplayer.so in /opt/firefox/plugins. Re-opened FF and everything has been peachy since.

@slayer666: Hmm... They look better in 3.5 than in 3.0.11 on my system.

penguiniator

@Alin Andrei: I did that too, and it works great!

rdw200169

@powerdoesntrun: people this still isn't simple, we're not talking about easy, because you understand, use, and live in the CLI, we're talking simple, for the AVERAGE user, who just uses the apps, and doesn't act as an admin. I am not saying with any other OS (yes even OS X), one doesn't need a certain level of self-education of how to maintain their computer, but linux (which I love!), doesn't have the same level, of simplicity and easy of use, when installing, upgrading apps that win, and os x have.

Not starting a war, but you guys really need to be real with yourselves, that even "one line" install is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.

beekerstudios

@powerdoesntrun: Here you go, now it's one line, lol:

sudo echo 'deb [ppa.launchpad.net] jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list; sudo echo 'deb-src [ppa.launchpad.net] jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list; sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE; sudo apt-get update && apt-get install firefox-3.5

Hendrich Attila

Strange that nobody mentioned how poor fonts look in 3.5 compared to 3.0.11.
I think it's called "font hinting" that I just can't seem to get right.

slayer666

@brundlefly76: Actually, installing new programs is really easy, but not when the developers don't provide the OS properly. This is really the Mozilla Team's fault. They should include installable packages (deb packages in Ubuntu cases) for major releases on their web site (instead of a tar file), just like they do for Windows and Mac OS. They probably don't because Firefox is the default browser for some Linux operating systems, but regardless, they really should release deb packages for normal users.

powerdoesntrun

@TomSwartz07: I just think it gives the wrong impression to non-Linux users: that to get things done in Linux requires a terminal. Too many people already believe that. I'd rather see, "Click the big green button. Or, copy and paste this command to save yourself time."

penguiniator

If you are using Arch Linux, just update normally and you'll get it.

$ pacman -Syu

@brundlefly76: alternatively, once it hits the repos, the update will be almost automatically installed

billy61

@TonyAgudo: The command in the article does not install it, either. It only extracts the tarball in the home directory.

Of course its faster with the terminal. BUT... a non-Linux user who thinks Linux is hard because you "have to use the terminal" to get things done is likely to believe that this article confirms their erroneous belief. I would have no problem with "You can click the big green download button on Firefox's website. Or, just copy and paste this command into your terminal to save yourself a lot of mouse jockeying." Then, terminal-phobic non-Linux users reading this article would not have a reason to think they have to use a terminal to download and install the Linux version of Firefox.

On the other hand, why stop at downloading and untaring it with a terminal command? If he really wanted to show off the terminal's time-saving abilities, he could have tacked on the additional commands needed to start the install routine. Copy, paste, hit [Enter], done.

penguiniator

@brundlefly76: *agrees significantly with this comment* Linux is the only "major" OS that seems to suffer from lack of ease in installing and updating programs.

Skorpeyon

The only problem that I had with 3.5 was getting the Flash plugin to work. I've found out that all you need to do is copy the flash plugin file from 3.0.11 to the plugins folder for 3.5.

everything else is sweeet!

TomSwartz07

@penguiniator:

Sometimes its just easier to type a 1 line command rather than open a browser, type 'firefox', click on the download link, open the file, click next, click install, etc.

If you just type the command, it does it all for you. :P

TomSwartz07

@jkrell: (that's how I installed Chromium)

jkrell

When I got Firefox 3.5, i put the "firefox" folder in my home directory, then made all my panel and main menu shortcuts open ~/firefox/firefox instead of where ever Firefox 3 was located. This may be a temporary fix, though, because as soon as 3.5 is in the repos, I'll just update. 3.0.1 works fine, though, so nobody needs to rush to get the new version up and running. I noticed a bit of a speed increase, a new private browsing mode, and a little + on the tab bar. Really, that's it. Ryan

AugustDolius

Would Ubuntu-Tweak work?

jkrell

@TonyAgudo: I'd copy and paste it myself (if I hadn't already installed FF 3.5 the day it came out from the Mozilla daily repositories).

zoomZAP

Those who are afraid of the command line can just download from the website, extract and run from the extracted folder until the new version shows up in their package manager.

Notes: Google Gears not yet available, had to switch to Scrapbook+ instead of Scrapbook, Norton Internet Security add-ons not working yet (in Windows version).

omegahelix

That big green button only initiates a download. It does not extract and install the package. Compare the steps and see which takes longer:

1. Open a web browser and go to mozilla.com.
2. Click the big green button to download the tarball.
3. Open up your file manager and navigate to the tarball.
4. Right-click the tarball and choose "Extract Here".

or

1. Open a terminal.
2. Type the command shown in the article.

Yeah, let's all open a terminal to download a package that has a big green button on firefox's website to do the same thing.

penguiniator

Tried 3.5 on ubuntu yesterday. It tried to load my previous session and just ended up with empty tabs. Then for some reason, the URL bar didn't change as I went from one tab to another. Odd.

elfchick

@brundlefly76: *tries real hard not to start an OS war*

wiseguyxp

@Denver80203: X-Windows copy/paste are awesome tools too. ;)

TheFu

Crap. I could have opened the command prompt, typed all that in.

Instead I clicked the link and next a few times.

I'm such an IDIOT!

Denver80203

@powerdoesntrun: Note to Linux: 'ease of use' means not having to find a 90-character command line incantation on Lifehacker just to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox.

I had 3.5 upgraded & installed on my Mac about 30 seconds after the announcement popped up and didn't have to type a single character.

brundlefly76

A few observations:

- The Windows FF3.5 at work and on my laptop seem to really crank out a difference in speed over 3.1. Firefox in Ubuntu is solid, as always, but I have not noticed the same over all performance increase that I did with windows. However, I have been using the dev build in Ubuntu for several weeks, so maybe I am more accustomed to it there.

-Sometimes full screen on video crashes FF3.5 (youtube, hulu) Of course this still has something to do with the linux/flash/firefox relationship that is so poor. Bring on HTML5 and open video. The faster flash is flushed, the better.

-The adobeair/browser problem mentioned earlier is adobe's problem - not Ubuntu or FF. The way it calls for the browser is sloppy-code. The same thing happens in Windows until default aps/browser is changed. The same fix does not work in Ubuntu (terminal or GUI). The only thing to do is simlink 3.5-->3.1 Best thing to do is just wait until the repos are updated and 3.1 is a native update.

-Tracemonkey seems to be good and stable and a major update, but it is still not as fast as chrome in Windows. Opera in Ubuntu seems to be nearly as fast - but of course neither of those browsers have anywhere near the customization level, cross-platform sync, and add-on power as FF, so the small speed difference isn't enough make a difference for productivity users to care.

Overall a nice upgrade. Functionality and integration and convenience all gets a nice boost which adds even more to the seamless desktop/bowser productivity integration that FF is already so good at.

Dale Cooper

@interficio: Grrr...make that a "they". I must still be tired..

interficio

I'm patiently waiting for my Linux x86_64 build to finish..last time I compiled, I did a 'make install', which effectively replaced my 3.0.11 installation, although Mozilla doesn't recommend this approach. The recommend a 'make package' to create a tarball, and then unpack it where desired.

interficio

Also, it's now available for ubuntu in the Jaunty repositories:

[www.ubuntusolutions.org]

englishman

This is not really 1 command. it's 2 with a pipe in between. It might be more useful to actually save the file instead of just plain installing it...

And you forgot the sudo, so I guess you are installing a userspace copy, or you are already running as root.

englishman

Yeah I'd be a bigger fan of it hitting the repositories. You can install a release candidate (rebranded) with:
'sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5'
But again, it doesn't replace 3.0.11.

Jamie Curtis

@h4nn4h: In my research, a lot of people thought it would be a stretch to see 3.5 hit the repositories before the Karmic Koala release of Ubuntu.

I ended up installing 3.5 using Ubuntuzilla (because I'm not that great at compiling from source).

[ubuntuzilla.wiki.sourceforge.net]

Greg.Rowler

If you're running Karmic (the current development branch), just install the firefox-3.5 package. If you're running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), it's available from the ubuntu-mozilla-security PPA

BradleyGnaeus

@powerdoesntrun:
Okay, lifehacker, thanks for reformatting my links without my permission. Just go here:

[www.ubuntusolutions.org]

powerdoesntrun

I'm a recent ubuntu convert; can anyone tell me how long it will take before this update reaches ubuntu oficially? I'm doing fine with 3.0 for now so I can wait, but I'm just curious.

h4nn4h

Go to /usr/bin and look at what the link 'firefox' points to. If it doesn't point to the correct version ie. it points to firefox->firefox-3.0 then remove the link and recreate it pointing to the correct version... $ cd /usr/bin $ sudo rm firefox $ sudo ln -s firefox-3.5 firefox Then all applications that don't use the Gnome defaults should work as well.

CasperFlaccus

I had issues with plugins.How long until it's on ubuntu's repos?

Mehdi Krit

This doesn't actually install it, it just downloads and extracts it into your home directory. If you actually want to install it, it's best just you use the mozilla-daily ppa.

sudo bash
echo 'deb [ppa.launchpad.net] jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo 'deb-src [ppa.launchpad.net] jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE
apt-get update && apt-get install firefox-3.5

It's not one line, but at least it does what you want.

powerdoesntrun

While not 100% main line there is the "Up and Comming" Ubuntu Mozilla Security Repository that you can enable to get soon to be officially released versions of the applications.

Read [www.asoftsite.org] for more information

Stephen Lecheler

If you're using Ubuntu then Ubuntuzilla (http://ubuntuzilla.wiki.sourceforge.net/) does a better job. It automatically backs up your original profile and installs the latest version of Firefox from Mozilla alongside the version shipped by Unbuntu. It also allows you to turn on automatic updates that come directly from Mozilla instead of having to wait for them to appear in Ubuntu's own repositories. Once Ubuntu start to ship the latest Firefox in their own repositories you can easily remove the Ubuntuzilla version. Ubuntuzilla works for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey as well.

ShuchismitaDoris

I have only installed it on my work box, my home is still running 3.0.11. A mistake I made, when I opened 3.5 for the first time I deleted the default profile thinking "I haven't set anything yet, this shouldn't hurt" but it erased all my favorites, plug-ins, themes etc from 3.0.11. I also am not found of the profile box that opens every time I open 3.5.

WayneHb

The biggest issue I've run across is that Adobe Air apps don't use the system preferences to determine what the default browser is. So, if I click a link in an Air app, it will open up FF 3.0 instead of 3.5, even though I've set 3.5 as the default browser via System > Preferences > Preferred Applications.

dazzlindonna

Or, if you're using swiftfox, you're probably already running 3.5rc3 :V

wererogue

But that's not optimized. Another way to install Firefox would be to add the Mozilla Daily Builds Ubuntu repository: [webupd8.blogspot.com]

Alin Andrei