A few newbie questions (openSUSE 10.1 and general.)
 

Well, a little backstory to start you all of, just to show you what you;re dealing with.

For years (well, actually, for all the time I've ever used a computer), I have used windows. So, I have absolutely no idea about anything to do with Linux. Anyway, the other d... err, month my dad decides that as a project, we were going to install and run linux on our secondary computer. So, after alot of struggling with bad downloads, bad disks, bad disk readers, I finally got it installed this afternoon, and its looking pretty cool. However, I've hit a few snags while I've been poking around.

1. Firstly, I knew that the version of Firefox that came with openSUSE 10.1 was old, being 1.5.0.3, and so I wanted to upgrade to the newest for Linux (which I assume is 2.0 or so?). However, for the life of me, I cannot find anywhere which lets me update! Searching through help, it menionted that the option to upgrade your version should be under "Help", but only when you are logged in as root. So, I log out, log in as root, but to no avail. Am I missing something blindly obvious?

2. Trying to get my head round the terminal, I followed the installation guide for gaim as shown here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=45094 , although with gaim 1.5.0 rather than the old version in the example. Anyway, it all went swimmingly until the configure line, at which point it spits out:

However, when I went into the folder normally, there was Gaim, all ready to be run. And it works... even though its own install readme file talks about configuring too... what happened?



Thanks in advance,
Ediblespread

Well, I'm not familiar with suse, so just a few comments. I know Fedora chose not to include FireFox 2.xx, as the bugs hadn't been worked out to it's satisfaction yet, (it does crash quite a bit more than 1.5 did), so that might be the problem. Also, with linux, most people don't log in to a graphical desktop as root, just because it's dangerous. They just open a terminal, the use the su (stands for Switch User) command to change to root to get one or two things done. You can switch to the root user with just "su" then the password, or switch to user "bob" or whatever with the "su bob" command, then bob's password. Hope that helps a little.

On a different note, have you thought about using Ubuntu ? They have a very newbie friendly community, and excellent online help. The following site has saved my bacon more times than I can count.

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Edgy

Best part is I haven't found anything on that site that didn't work just the way they said it would. No more googling for hours and hours. Just my 2 cents. Good luck...

David

P.S. The c compiler bit was just telling you that gcc isn't installed, or not installed in the right $PATH, which is just a list of places linux looks for ...well...everything. I don't know why gaim would need a compiler though. What tool does suse use to install software ?

Yeah, I already know that - but I was desperate ;).

I understand why they wouldnt include it, but I dont get why they wouldnt let you have the option to install it. I may have missed it however - I just found the preferences menu just now, after searching for a good 10 minutes :D. *grumbles about them moving his precious preferences*.

I would change to ubantu, but my dad is adamant that we use openSUSE... just because. Dont ask me.

Thanks anyway.

EDIT: Actually, I just realised: 1.5.0.3 isnt the newest version of Firefox for linux, is it?

Firefox 2.0 may not be available as an update for openSuse 10.1. That release isn't too old yet but it is a possibility worth considering.

Then again, I'm wondering just how you tried to do the update. Did you use yast? smart? Have you got zmd running (which would autocheck for updates)?

You could always download it straight from mozilla.com Here is a link.

http://www.mozilla.com/products/down...nux&lang=en-US

Have fun with that. Looks like it's a tar.gz file. You probably already know how to unpack and install from them, but if you don't just reply here and we can point you in the right direction.

Good luck...

David

I have already tried downloading and unpacking it. When I try to configure it I get the same message as I do with gaim. Again, i can run it from the file anyway, but it seems to just boot up firefox 1.5.whatever anyway. I think someone mentioned somewhere that you have to rename the original firefox file, but I cant find it anywhere.

jay: Remember, completely new to linux. Yast etc are my projects for the future. I have no idea how to do it; I dunno, I just expected that since on windows I have a nice easy "update" option in the help menu of firefox, it would be the same on windows.

On an odd note, if I go to Tools --> Extensions, then it lists Firefox as a theme, but it lists it as Firefox 2.0... which it definitely isnt... :rolleyes:

Anyone want to tell me how to attempt it using Yast?

You can launch Yast by selecting it from the menu (it shouldn't be too hard to find). I'm doing some intensive work on a different distro right now so I unfortunately can't boot into my Suse to give you an accurate how-to; but you should be able to get a lot of information from here:
http://en.opensuse.org/Add_Package_Repositories_to_YaST

You can add plenty of repositories (=collections of software packages) to Yast. The more you have, the more you can choose from. The first link is for the official suse packages. These contain the packages that are on the cd/dvd as well as a load of updates. If they aren't included in Yast yet, you need to add 10.1/OS and 10.1/non-OS; the 10.1/source repository isn't very interesting for the average user. You may then want to disable cd/dvd as an install source; if you don't, Yast will frequently ask you to insert the cd/dvd in order to retrieve some package, which gets pretty irritating if it happens a lot; by disabling cd/dvd, Yast will pull everything straight from the internet.

http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories

There are also third-party packages; these are packagese that Suse can't offer itself, usually because of copyright reasons. They contain some excellent materials, though, including multimedia codecs, flash, java etc etc. You needn't add all of these: if you add packman and suser-jengelh, you should be more than OK. The packages can be found here:
http://en.opensuse.org/YaST_package_repository

As for trying to update firefox from within itself, I have some doubts whether that will work on Linux. If you do, firefox may know it has been updated (which is probably why it shows 2.0) but the system software manager doesn't for that reason (which is why you don't get 2.0 after all). The failsafe way of installing packages is using the system package manager (= Yast).

And trust me, once you know how to use Yast, you'll get a superb OS. You'll at last be able to do all the stuff you can't do with openSuse out of the box: watching movies, ripping videos and music, making online phone calls etc etc etc

With whichever distro you choose, the default package manager will almost always give you the best results, that is even more true if you are new to linux.

If it (installing firefox from source) gives you the same compiler error, you don't have gcc (which is the gnu C compiler) installed. The easiest way to get it would be via yast. Are you using yast already ? Does it not offer firefox 2.xx ? If yast doesn't offer it, I would try to install gcc, then re-install the firefox you downloaded earlier. Sorry I can't be of more help, I'm not a suse user.

Good luck...

David

budword,

firefox doesn't need to be compiled. It just needs to be unzipped to any directory you want and then it's ready to be used. Simple as that.

Ahhh, he was getting errors about gcc and configure errors he said. And it was a .tar.gz file, I thought it was source ? Unless he's trying to ./configure a binary, which would result in some errors I would imagine. I don't know, have to wait and see what he has to say.

David

Thanks very much jay, I shall have a look at all that stuff.

Bud, as with gaim, I simply followed the instructions given in the link, but obviously using firefox instead of gaim :D. So, it is a tar.gz file, but for some reason it doesn't want to, and doesn't seem to need to, compile, or make... Ill just change computers to my linux one, and then I'll post the full terminal results here if you want?

EDIT: Gah, this Yast is confusing. I am attempted to choose something basic to install, so thought I'd take a bash at this: http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories which is the two 10.1 OS and non_OS that you mentioned. However, following this guide: http://en.opensuse.org/Add_Package_R...g_Repositories it seems I need a server name and directory, and this has got me really confused... I see there is an option to add using just a URL - is this what I need instead of the server lark?

EDIT2: Wait, I think I have it. In the above cases, http://download.opensuse.org is the server, /distribution/SL-10.1/non-oss-inst-source is the directory, right?

EDIT3: Well, following a guide I found here: http://community.netscape.com/n/pfx/...704&redirCnt=1 , I used the repositary given, chucked it in Yast, then used softward manager and attempted to update it. Then it asked for a disk...?? Surely it should be updating via the web??

As for the terminal: Its now doing something weird when I try to ./configure it...

Stephen@linux-9dkx:~/firefox> ./configure
bash: ./configure: No such file or directory
Stephen@linux-9dkx:~/firefox>

This is where you unpacked firefox, right?

In that directory typeThis will run the firefox binary from this directory. Otherwise (if you just type firefox) it will run the binary that is in your $PATH. Thats the default folders the OS will look for binaries (just like with Windows).

I tried SUSE 10.1, found 10.2 less buggy (others report differently!).

In 10.2 to install Firefox using YaST, first add repository
YaST - Software - Installation source

Should bring up a dialog box entitled Configured Software Catalogs

Browse to your nearest mirror from http://en.opensuse.org/Mirrors_Released_Version
Copy the URL from the address bar of the browser, in my case, ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/op...10.2/repo/oss/

Click Add button, select FTP
In the server name put mirror.pacific.net.au (or whatever)
In the directory put linux/opensuse/distribution/10.2/repo/oss/ (or whatever)

Click Next

YaST will create a source, when complete, close the Software Catalogs module, and open Software Management. Wait... When the module has finished 'checking dependencies' search for Firefox. If it is unchecked, check it, keep clicking the checkbox to cycle between install-update-delete. Click Accept, all should be well...

Sorry if this wasn't what you were after...

General Failure: Thanks ever so much. Basically, it seems that if Firefox 1.5 is already running, it simply runs that, but if there is no firefox running, this manages to force it to run 2.0.0.3 (Dont like all those 0s... :D). Anyway, now to re-write the shortcut to run the new one. I hope that works.

Kiwi: Im running 10.1 for now, so im not sure if that works at all --> Ill have a look though.

EDIT: Oh great. Now that I've finally got 2.0.0.3 running, Ive hit another snag! Well, actually, two. Firstly, while using ./firefox works fine, and I can run it through the program in the folder where it is stored, when I placed it on my desktop it refused to do anything - you double click on it and nothing happens (curse openSUSE for not actually showing when your comptuer is doing something or not!) anyway, the more annoying problem is that it refuses to restart, so I cannot get rid of any old themes or install new ones - when you hit "Restart" it simply shut it down, and running it again doesnt change anything... I assume this is since its no the original Firefox... so is there anyway to fix this?

Did you place a link to the program on your desktop or did you copy the binary there? If you copied the binary, it won't work. Thats because the binary looks for its libs and so on in the same directory.

For the restarting I'd assume that this be gone if you place/edit the firefox symlink in /usr/bin to point to your firefox 2 binary (and maybe uninstall ff 1.5, this might be an issue because if firefox 1.5 is in the PATH and if you try to restart ff 2 it runs ff 1.5 noticing this is a different binary and thus stopping.