Instructions to install Firefox 3.5 and higher into Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope. It is very easy but does require some terminal commands. An easy script is provided that you can download to make this easier.

Installing the latest version of Firefox in Ubuntu 9.04

Posted: May 5th, 2010 | Author:

Note: Code looks like this, and key presses look like this.

Just because Ubuntu is at 10.04 doesn’t mean that the 9.04 users (me!) get left behind: I found out a very easy way to update Firefox from the 3.0 version to whatever the latest version is. Even better, this works on the 32 and the 64 bit version, although I think it only installs the 32 bit version.

If you try and install Firefox the normal way on a 64 bit Ubuntu, it won’t work and says it’s the “wrong architecture”, meaning it isn’t a 64 bit program. (I run 64 bit Ubuntu 9.04) However, you can download the installer and get it running manually with these easy instructions:

First go to the temporary folder, it’s where big files get unpacked so it doesn’t fill up your normal user space: cd /tmp

Now use the program “wget” (it’s already installed) to download the latest version of Firefox using: wget "http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.6.3&os=linux&lang=en-US" Note: If there is a higher version of Firefox, simply substitute the number 3.6.3 with whatever the most recent version number is. Also, this uses the US English language, but you can change that as well.

What you just downloaded is a compressed file, and you’ll need to decompress it with this command: tar xvjf firefox-*.bz2

  • tar This is the decompressor program, although others obviously exist
  • xvjf These are the options to pass the tar program, they tell it to extract the files, be verbose (list the files aas they are uncompressed). use the bzip compression (j), and do this to the following file
  • firefox-*.bz2 This is the file you downloaded, but using the asterisk (*) lets us select it without typing all the numbers

    • The next part gets into the real trick. You first want to copy the files you just decompressed into the /usr/lib directory, then into the /usr/bin directory, so it can be accessed like a program. First copy into the /usr/lib folder:
    sudo cp -r firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3

    Now backup the old version of Firefox in case you break something. Do this by renaming the old version. In Linux, renaming a file is done by using the "move" command:
    sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.old

    Now we want to make symbolic links (like shortcuts) in the right places to the right files. Symbolic links all take the same form of ln -s [target] [new link], so do this:
    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-3.6.3
    sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.6.3 /usr/bin/firefox

    Make sure to restart Firefox, and everything should be fine. Hooray!

    If everything broke, you can at least put it back the way it was by changing the links to go back to the original Firefox version:
    sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.bak
    sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox.old /usr/bin/firefox

    I also made a simple Bash script which puts all of this together. Just copy the following text into a file and run it in the terminal by using bash [file name] You will have to make the script runnable first by using: chmod +x [file name]

    #!/bin/bash

    # You can choose the language and pick the most recent version by going here:
    # http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html
    # Right click on the link by the penguin, select "copy" in the pop-up menu,
    # and replace the folowing link (remember to put quotation marks "" around the link)

    LINK="http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.6.3&os=linux&lang=en-US"

    # Now put the exact version number in--it should be the version number shown
    # in the link (use quotations!):

    VERSION="3.6.3"

    cd /tmp
    wget $LINK
    tar xvjf firefox-*.bz2
    sudo cp -r firefox /usr/lib/firefox-$VERSION
    sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.old
    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-$VERSION/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-$VERSION
    sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-$VERSION /usr/bin/firefox

    Let me know if you run into snags, I'll try and help sort things out.

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