Install Firefox 3 on your aspire one easy

Hi all i have had a play and found the only way i can get FF3 to work on my aspire one is as follows. I TAKE BLAME FOR DAMAGE TO YOUR SYSTEM IF THIS DOES'NT WORK FOR YOU.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE PEOPLE THAT ISSUING THE COMMAND rm -f IS VERY DANGEROUS SO BE VERY CAREFULL WHEN DOING THIS TUTORIAL I DONT RECOMMEND ANYONE WITH NO LINUX SKILL TO ISSUE THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN YOURSELF ALSO. I TAKE NO THATS NO BLAME FOR ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE TO YOUR SYSTEM WITH USING THIS TUTORIAL AT ALL NONE.

I HAVE DONE THIS ON MY SYSTEM A FEW WEEKS AFTER SETUP AND IT WORKED PERFECTLY INCLUDING ALL PLUGINS WORKED AND BOOKMARKS AND SO ON WERE KEPT. ALSO DONE IT ON A SYSTEM RESTORE USING ACER ASPIRE ONE RECOVERY USB STICK SO SOON AS I BOOTED IT UP I SET IT UP AND WORKED PERFECT AGAIN. WITH NO PROBLEMS AT ALL.

FIRSTLY BACKUP THE ORIGINAL FOLDER FOR FF

open terminal either xfce start button then terminal at the top of the menu list. Or if you don't have the xfce desktop switcher installed and have the original desktop then hold down the left Alt key and hit F2 so thats Alt + F2. A dialog will appear type in it terminal then click run your terminal window should appear a second or so later. I'm going to go thru this step by step so it is easy for the complete novice to do also.

Now we have our terminal window open type or copy and paste the following code below into it and hit enter.

Code:

su -

it will ask you for your password this is the password you setup on your first boot of your laptop.
now in terminal type or copy and paste the code below

Code:

cp -r /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.14/ /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.14bkup/

The above code will make a backup copy of your firefox directory.

Now right click open new tab and download the link below.
http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0.3&os=linux&lang=en-US
the above link will download FF3 into your Downloads directory when it has completed downloading to your laptop copy and paste the next code below.

Code:

cd /home/user/Downloads/

the above code will put you in your Downloads folder now in terminal copy and paste the below code

Code:

sudo tar -jvxf firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2 --directory /usr/lib/

Now the above code will make a new directory called firefox in the directory /usr/lib/ We now need to delete the old firefox and then rename the new firefox directory so it's the same name as the old firefox folder.

Now to delete it DONT GET SCARED AS WE MADE A BACKUP OF IT AT THE START OF THIS TUTORIAL.
PLEASE NOTE FIREFOX MUST BE CLOSED FOR THIS PART. NO FIREFOX WINDOWS SHOULD BE OPEN AT ALL SO EITHER COPY AND PASTE THE REST OF THIS TUTORIAL INTO A TEXT DOCUMENT OR USE ANOTHER COMPUTER FOR THIS PART PLEASE.
Sorry about all the CAPS above but you do need to read it CAREFULLY.
Now in your terminal type or copy and paste the code below and hit enter.

Code:

cd /usr/lib/

then

Code:

rm -rf firefox-2.0.0.14/

then

Code:

mv -f firefox/ firefox-2.0.0.14/

NOW you should have firefox 3 working on your aspire one just by clicking either the browser button or xfce menu buton > network > firefox web browser.

After clicking the button to start firefox give it a few seconds and it should ask you to accept an agreement accept it and all should be working very well. If you do run in to trouble and it wont start the only other option i can give at this minute is to restore the original firefox by doing the below codes.

TO RESTORE THE ORIGINAL FIREFOX
ALL FIREFOX WINDOWS MUST BE CLOSED FOR THIS PART ALSO.
In your terminal window thats still open.

Code:

rm -f firefox-2.0.0.14/

then

Code:

mv -f firefox-2.0.0.14bkup/ firefox-2.0.0.14/

I HOPE THIS HELPS YOU GUYS LIKE IT HAS DONE FOR ME. As the other methods don't work for me at all.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO correct me on my typos as im rushing a little to get this up and me to work.

 

Why?? What problem you have posting this??

 

I got it working now thanks for your help

 

PM to KiNG - site Admin... There was some problem with attachments and Avatars some while ago...

 

Many thanks for your efforts but it didn't work for me! When I got to "rm -r firefox-2.0.0.14/" I was asked whether I wanted to descend into sub directories and delete the FF files there. I responded "y" several hundred times! When I finally got to "mv -f firefox/ firefox-2.0.0.14/" and then tried to run ff3 nothing happened. Now busy re-installing.
I am a linux newbie so I guess that doesn't help!

 

Hi sorry for your trouble but like i say just at the bottom and top of my tut you should be able to recover you backup of firefox that you should have made at the begining of the tutorial all you should have to do is as root in a terminal window do su - then enter your password. Then cd /usr/lib/ then just do by typing in there cp -rf firefox-2.0.0.14bkup/ firefox-2.0.014/ and that should make a copy of your backup to the same dir that your in ov your firefox that is originally installed on your system. You shouldnt need to do a re-install mate. Please let me know anyone that has trouble with this tutorial and i will try to help in any way i can to help you recover rather than re-install.

 

I got as far as pasting in the "sudo tar -jvxf firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2 --directory /usr/lib/", but after pressing enter it came up with "ar: firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors".

Is it supposed to say that?!!! I was too scared to carry on so have left it at that. Can you tell i'm a newbie?!!! Help!

 

Hi all that error is. Is that your in the wrong DIR open a terminal and do if i'm right firefox downloads to /home/user/Download/ or /home/user/Downloads/ folder in your terminal type

Code:

cd /home/user/Download/

you should now be in that DIR now in terminal type

Code:

ls

then hit enter if your in the right DIR you should see a list of the files in that dir and one of them should be firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2 if so then enter the

Code:

sudo tar -jvxf firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2 --directory /usr/lib/

and hit enter if not type

Code:

cd /home/user/Downloads/

NOTICE the s at the end of Downloads thats the only difference then again type in your terminal ls then hit enter you should now see the file firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2 now type the command above and it should extract the firefox folder to the DIR /usr/lib/ then follow the rest of the tutorial hope this helps you if you have anymore trouble please let me know.

 

Oh dear! I just can't seem to get into the download file. The first one you gave me (Download with no 's') said file does not exist. The other one was accepted, but even after typing 'Is', it didn't open a download folder. When i've looked in my download folder (all the stuff is in 'my disc' if that's any help), there's lots of Firefox stuff in there (though it doesn't say Firefox 3 specifically anywhere). Sorry to be such a pain. Any other suggestions?

 

Worked for me. Very Slick. Thanks

 

Oh it's so frustrating - I can get into the downloads terminal, but it just keeps coming up with

Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors


Grrrrr!

 

It's probably simply due to the fact that you downloaded the firefox install file to a different directory, not /home/users/Downloads.

Open Firefox and do CTRL + J to open downloads. you should see an entry for the file you downloaded (firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2). right click on that file and select "Open containing folder". You will have an explorer like window with the place where you file was saved

Right click within the File Manager window and use the option "Open Terminal Here". This will bring up a terminal window setting you up already in the right directory. Make sure you've closed all Firefox windows at this stage.

you can now continue the tutorial from this command:

Code:

    sudo tar -jvxf firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2 --directory /usr/lib/

once that's extracted, you'll need to reset yourself as admin

Code:

su -

before you can continue with the rest:

Code:

cd /usr/lib/

then delete the old version

Code:

rm -rf firefox-2.0.0.14/

and finally move the new version

Code:

mv -f firefox/ firefox-2.0.0.14/

Also, you may want to use firefox 3.0.4 which has been released since this first post. Obviously simply replace anything spelt 3.0.3 by 3.0.4. Here's thelink for English US but you can of course get your local language easily. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0.4&os=linux&lang=en-US

 

Oh my God, oh my God!!!!! I've finally done it - thank you thank you thank you! Sorry I've been such a pain!

 

I´ve installed FF 3.0.3 aside of the standard FF 2 in /usr/bin and the automated update to 3.0.4 went smoothly without any problems.

Has anyone experienced the same with a replacing 3.0.3 installation like described above?
This would encourage me to try it, too, since I´m keen to surf with the newest version

 

thanks for this, it all looks pretty straightforward

I wonder if there are any hidden gotchas by replacing FF2 with FF3

If there are, my preference would be to install FF3 alongside FF2 and change the desktop/menu options to start FF3 instead of FF2, I'm sure this is possible without much effort...I'll spent some time looking into this and trying to see if there really are any "gotchas"

 

The cleanest way might be to uninstall all extensions in FF2, uninstall FF2, install FF3, and re-install extensions. I wouldn't bother trying to keep both FF2 alongside FF3 as I don't think it's worth it imho.

 

I think that all this could be scripted so that as long as you put the FF3 upgrade file into Downloads it would all work.
BTW: Since its many years since I did unix work I'm not offering to write the script.!

 

Brilliant. I had previously downloaded version 3.0.4 but ll I had to do was alter the version reference. Thanks very much, had been trying to do this without any kind of success.

 

I've got FF3 running fine on my AAO but I can't seem to install any plugins or extensions. The extensions window just appears blank. It has carried over some from FF2 that I had installed but although I know they're running they still don't appear in the window and susequently won't update. Any ideas?

 

Instead of the above (which I had not seen a few days ago, anyway) I downloaded the firefox.sh from acer site and then installed it in my AAO. Two problems with that:
a) the version I downloaded was huge, mainly I suspect because it included dozens of language packs
b) the installed version was 3.03 (acer has not yet realised 3.05 is out?) which will not automatically update (as is the case at my other linux machine).

Any suggestion?

And, by the way, great to find you guys!