I have a CentOS 4,2 with Firefox ver 1.0.7. Now as I want to update my browser with Firefox latest release 1.5. I downloded the tar archive and uncompressed/unziped it. But now I do not know how actually to update my browser saving all existing profile. I backed up '.mozilla/firefox' folder and then run the executable 'firefox' fron new archiv. But that simply run the browser with new ver. So I want to know do I need to replace my existing firefox files '/usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7' in process of updating the browser or there is some other way out..?.

I am not sure which distro your using, but what I did was:

downloaded the 1.5 software, un tar'ed it.

Copied the "Plugins" folder from /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib and deleted everything else in there.
Opened the Firefox 1.5 folder and copied everything into the /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib folder.
Copied over the plugin's saved.

Everything worked just fine.

As for you, you can do

whereis firefox or locate firefox and replace the 1.0.7 lib files with the ones from 1.5

If you want you can just wait for the RPM to be released on YaST in the next few days (well I am guessing).

I tried to backup my existing firefox files from /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7' and then replacing all the files wit new release. But after that when I start firefox, it did not respond at all. I mean it try to search something or what .

As of now I have simply restored back my proiginal files, but still looking for that way to update the browser..

Any other suggestion or clue ?.

The repository update should be happening soon. Then you can use yum.

You mean the CentOS repositary or some other one ?.