Installing Firefox on Debian Squeeze 64, KDE
 

I have managed to install Firefox 13.1 with icons on KDE it works normally , only problem, it does not pick up the plugins from Iceweasel , what is the procedure to get the all the plugins on the new installation? Is there a need to remove Iceweasel before installation, or they can coexist happily ever after?

If you have Firefox, I don't see a point in keeping Iceweasel. They may be fine installed at the same time, but they might not run at the same time. As far as the plugins, just install them through Firefox itself.

I think I'll skip over mentioning why it's pointless to install firefox when you have iceweasel? Anyway... the plugins from iceweasel's user profile directory get picked up by firefox, if they're not it may be because they're installed in the system's plugin directory, which firefox may not know about. As far as I know if you install your plugins through the browser UI itself rather than from the repos, it should just work.

First make sure you are using the 64bit version of Firefox.

Download:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla....13.0.1.tar.bz2

After that you should have to do absolutely nothing for it to pickup the same plugins Iceweasel uses. Do not mess with moving, symlinking, or creating a special Firefox/plugins directory as none of these are needed.

Also make sure that you install plugins like Flash and Java using the Debian package management way and not by downloading them directly.
If for some odd reason it does not pickup the Iceweasel plugins, copy the pluginreg.dat from your Iceweasel profile to your new Firefox profile.


If you have any problems take a look at:
Tech Patterns :: Switching from Debian Iceweasel to Firefox, permanently - http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1435.html

All I do is download Firefox, extract, then I copy /usr/share/applications/iceweasel , rename it to firefox and edit the Exec= and Icon= lines to point to the correct Firefox information, which in my case is in `/Downloads/firefox

After this Firefox will update itself whenever Mozilla releases new versions.

Thanks for the replies, I followed the following procedure,
1. Download and moved to opt directory
2.extracted and became Firefox directory
3. The did the following
a. ln -s /opt/firefox /usr/local/firefox13
b. ln -s /usr/local/firefox13/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox13
4. Right Clicked on the KDE launcher, pick menu editor picked Internet, then picked new and entered Firefox and for the command to run it entered /usr/local/bin/firefox13, the browsed to the
firefox directory and picked mozicon128.png as launching icon , I have no idea where is ice weasel profile, I can copy and rename /usr/share/applications/iceweasel , but don't know how to pint it to opt/firefox ,

Evil, if you there, just describe how you would work out the Exec=.............. part, if the Firefox is in opt? would this be correct? Exec=/usr/bin/firefox %u.

I have never used the /opt method. I just leave the firefox dir in ~./Downloads

and put my firefox.desktop in /usr/share/applications

If you do it the /opt way just follow the steps on
Tech Patterns :: Switching from Debian Iceweasel to Firefox, permanently - http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1435.html

You might need to read thru the entire thread.

Put the plugins in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ . Or symlink them there. Then iceweasel, firefox and chrome finds them.

Just in case you're unaware, Iceweasel 13 is available from here: http://mozilla.debian.net/
(official iceweasel maintainer's repo)

I got it going finally, Thank you to all of you wonderful people! much appreciated it.

which is exactly where things like Flash and Java get installed to using apt-get install

Plugins

• DivX Browser Plug-In
• Java(TM) Plug-in 1.7.0_05
• KParts Plugin
• mplayerplug-in is now gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.6
• QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.9
• RealPlayer 9
• Shockwave Flash
• Windows Media Player Plug-in

Sure. Helps to know it though. Personally I like updating my flashplayer and java installation manually to keep up with the security updates as the stuff in non-free can get quite dated.

Edit: That said, I'm not saying non-free is one big security hole. I'm just saying I'm too paranoid to use a java version that is several minor versions behind the current one. How easy it is for a site to exploit those plugins on Linux is another story.

if you use flashplugin-nonfree you updated it easily:
update-flashplugin-nonfree --install

As for Java the version in the Debian repos have backported security fixes.

That said I use the upstream Oracle Java 7.
Java(TM) Plug-in 1.7.0_05
File: /usr/lib/jvm/j2re1.7-oracle/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

I actually tried to find out if it was ever updated but never got a clear answer by searching the web. If Debian backports security fixes then I guess java is secure enough. I'd still update manually though to get the latest and greatest.