I don't think this is a FAQ, but I'm gonna toss it out there to the opinions of the crowd here at LQ.

Say, I install a distro, and chose the "install-everything." method, only removing stuff in the detailed package by package selection that I absolutley positively knew I wasn't going to use.

The distro installs an older version of some program, say Mozilla 1.6....

what's the best course of action here, if you wanted to install a newer mozilla?

Uninstall old Mozilla 1.6 and install Mozilla 1.7 or 1.8 or whatever?

Install Mozilla 1.6 or 1.8 into the same directory that mozilla 1.6 is installed in?

I'm looking for opinions. currently running an update check on the distro to see if the distro maker is going to throw in a newer mozilla or not.

Also, reasons backing up opinions would be nice, too before I proceed.

Remove everything from the old version with a package manager and check if it has deleted everything (config files if you don't need them anymore) and install the new version. It's best to start clean isn't it, that's why I do it this way, saves me some time fixing errors because the old and new version conflict somehow.

If you have a distro like Red Hat, Debian or Slackware, darkleaf's way is often the easiest. However, if you don't, its often easier to just install over the old one. I use LFS and so I compile everything for source, so I rely on the new install overwriting stuff from the old one.

You could always install mozilla from one of the snapshots on mozilla.org in your home directory.

Here is what I would do (from the console):

# mkdir Applications
# cd Applications
# wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or...t-pango.tar.gz
# tar -xvzf mozilla-1.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu-gtk2-xft-pango.tar.gz
# cd mozilla
# ./mozilla

This will allow you to run mozilla out of your home directory. You can keep the older version of Mozilla installed (just in case there is ever a problem). I have a ton of applications installed in my ~/Applications directory - it is a nice way to keep my system clean by not installing packages from different sources. I create menu entries for the applications that I install in that directory. When you want to uninstall the application, you can just "cd" to the "Applications" directory and run a "rm -rfv" on the application that you want to remove (or just drag it into the trash).

You can also compile and install applications this way by adding the --prefix switch the the ./configure option (ex. ./configure --prefix=/home/${HOME}/Applications/${ApplicationName}).

Hope that helped.