Hi i'm new here and new to linux in general. I've just installed Kubuntu 6.06.1 (i386) on my system and am trying to install a few things i want.

I went to mozilla.com and downloaded the i686 firefox.tar.gz. Then i followed the directions here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxNewVersion

to the letter up to the part where you type 'firefox' to make it start (except for the part about backing up my bookmarks as i don't have any yet).

I typed firefox in a konsole and got this error:

/opt/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I did a search on these forums, which is always the first thing to do. I found one or two other similarish cases. I think that installing the libgtk library may do the trick.

I opened up the Adept package manager and tried to find libgtk so i could install it, but it wasn't listed. I did find gtk2-engines-gtk-qt however. I noticed from the previous threads that synaptic may help me do it, so i tried sudo apt-get install synaptic (and Synaptic), and sudo apt-get install kynaptic (and Kynaptic) but got errors e.g:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package Synaptic

I could use a little bit of advice to nudge me in the right direction.

Hi andy
Welcome for your first post!
Did you check the Software Requirements for Firefox?
You can look here
but I paste the part for Linux systems :

In particular do you have gtk+2.0 installed on your machine?
Because Firefox is a GTK based application.
I don't use Kubuntu, so I give you only general infos.
But it is a start to solve your problem.
I hope you will find a solution quickly.

You might need to enable some different repositories. If you post what's in /etc/apt/sources.lst we can check if any are missing. (I think that's it, I don't use ubuntu anymore so I can't check)

You should be able to install firefox using adept, which would bring in any other packages you need as well. Just so you know Synaptic and Kynaptic are frontends to apt-get, like Adept. I preferred Synaptic over Adept, but people may have personal preferences.

Merci vraiment M. Berbae i didn't know about the firefox software requirements link.

# Linux kernel - 2.2.14 or higher with the following libraries or packages:

* glibc 2.3.2 or higher
* XFree86-3.3.6 or higher
* gtk+2.0 or higher
* fontconfig (also known as xft)
* libstdc++5

I have:

# Linux kernel - 2.6.15-26 (i think)

* libdbus-glib-1-2 and libglib2.0-0. Can't find glibc
* libXxf86misc1 and libXxf86vm1. Can't find XFree86
* gtk2-engines-gtk-qt. Can't find gtk+
* fontconfig YES!
* libstdc++5 YES!

I have found the sources.list for you Mr McMillan. It says this (Please note i've had to put all the http parts of links on brackets because the forum says i'm not allowed to post URLs until i've made 3 posts, despite the fact i've posted 4 already...):

I did try installing firefox with adept but couldn't work it out. And the only firefox related item that came up on search was mozilla-firefox-locale-en-gb which seems to be some kind of language package.

On the Add/Remove Programs thing i searched 'Any Suite' and Firefox was on the 'Internet' section but it was greyed out, so i couldn't enable or disable it any way.

But i understand the Kubuntu version of firefox is much slower than the mozilla.org version, for whatever reason so that's the one i'm trying to get going. It looks as though i'm missing some of the components firefox needs to work.

I've been told that the Ubuntu repositories can be a bit flakey, and inaccessible for hours at a time. But are these repositories the only way to get the dependencies i need? I've not yet even had the chance to use Adept anyway as it only seems to list everything i already have installed, which is useful..

I've edited /etc/apt/sources.list using sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list and uncommented all the sources that are commented out above. It doesn't seem to have made any difference whatsoever.

I'm guessing i still need to obtain a few libraries to make firefox work. Namely:

* glibc 2.3.2 or higher
* XFree86-3.3.6 or higher
* gtk+2.0 or higher

Also, my disappearing internet connection returned today. And yet again the solution was to keep rebooting until the internet worked again. As before the net returned on the 3rd bootup. I'm thinking something is in need of configuration.

You said in your first post:
Did you install the Desktop version or the Alternate version ?
Because on the Alternate version there is everything you are looking for, and Firefox comes with it already.
I think the Kubuntu 6.06.1 Alternate is much more complete than the Desktop version.
As for the libraries you think you need, I can tell you that you already have the glibc 2.3.6 libraries and the Xorg 7.0 X server, which replaced the XFree86 X server, because they are basic libraries needed for the functionning of your system and the KDE GUI.
Maybe only the gtk+2.0 (AKA gtk2) is missing on your machine, and the Alternate version has the 2.8.20 version.
I think you have an incomplete installation and, if you can, I advise you to install the Kubuntu 6.06.1 Alternate version.
Best wishes to you.

Having the repositories working is the best way to install things, so at some point you should get that figured out. I haven't had a problem accessing any repositories, though based the first line there was definitely a problem at least when you installed. If you continue having problems you might be want to choose a different location than the British repositories. There's a site that can generate a new repository list for you, but I can't seem to find it anymore, I bet there's a link somewhere at the ubuntu forums though. After you make changes to the sources.lst file you need to update the list of packages, since you only have listed the packages already installed you almost certainly still need to do this. There should be a way to update through Adept, but I don't know what it is. You can do the same thing by typing sudo apt-get update into a terminal.

Berbae is right that you should have everything except the gtk libraries just by having a normal install. I'm pretty sure libglib is what the ubuntu calls the package for glib stuff. Similarly the gtk package you want is called libgtk2.0-0.

Good advice. I'm downloading the Alternate ISO right now and i will run MD5SUMS on it before install to rule out any errors caused in download. Maybe this will work better for me.

Could my NIC be the problem with the repositories? I'm using the onboard LAN on an ASUS A8N-SLI SE mobo which uses an 'nVidia nForce4 built-in Gigabit MAC with external PHY'.

My router is a D-Link DSL-504T with built in modem and the latest firmware. I believe it changes something every 604000ish seconds from a range or 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.33.

It's absolutely rock solid in WinXP. Very rare for me to get a stuck session since i changed the IP thingy from changing every 60 seconds to every 604000ish seconds instead.

In Adept there is a button labelled 'Fetch Updates' which i think is what you mean mcmillan, but that doesn't work for me. It's as though it can't even connect to find anything.

I can see that the repositories are central to everyday life in linux and it's vital i get them working before i can go further.

Ok an update on the situation, which has improved.

I downloaded the Alternate ISO. Burned it and made K3b check it's integrity. It failed and so did the cds self-check. I burned the image again, this time it passed the K3b check and it's own checks several times.

I installed the i386 Alternate. The attempt at downloading security updates failed, just as the AMD64 Desktop version and the i386 Desktop version did. Install completed.

I opened Adept. Again i had 937 packages installed, but this time importantly i have 1156 available and plenty listed as 'Not installed'. And when i click Fetch Updates for this list the progress bar completes in the blink of an eye.

I searched for 'gtk' and three entries of interest came up. libgtk2.0.0, libgtk2.0-bin and libgtk2.0-common. I selected to install them and it began to, i was prompted to install the cd and did, installation completed and the updates were listed as installed.

So it looks as though the repositories are working now. Brilliant news.

Now the important part. I went back to mozilla.org and downloaded firefox again. Followed the instructions again (link in first post) and installed firefox without a hitch. Run command 'firefox' and it opens. Excellent. Imported my bookmarks and there they are. Excellent.

One slight problem though. Firefox won't connect to any webpages. It just times out as though it can't find an internet connection, even though there is, because Konqueror is surfing fine.

I'm so close now, it must be something really minor. But what?

In Firefox choose in the scrolling down menu Edit/Preferences and
choose General/connexion settings...
and configure there what concerns your connexion, maybe "Direct connexion to the Internet" or something else.
It's nice you progressed in your installation. Congratulations!

Thanks for all the help so far you guys.

I checked my preferences and firefox is setup with a 'Direct connection to the internet' which i guess has to be right for me. Connected to a modem/router.

Also i put about:config in the browser and searched for 'network.dns.disableIPv6' to check it was false like it should be. But it is by default so that's not the problem either.

I've now actually managed to get firefox working by changing the default setting of 'network.dns.disablePv6' from 'False' to 'True'.

However i am still getting intermittent complete loss of internet connection (unrelated to firefox). The only remedy i have found to this so far is to keep rebooting Kubuntu until it works (between 1 and 5 reboots).

I am also still unable to connect to online repositories. It appears as though before i must have connected to the repository list on the install cd and got updates from there.

It looks as though i've found a legitimate Kubuntu bug with apt-get and D-Link routers. It may be the inbuilt NAT or firewall but Kubuntu has a problem with it.

I've found a few other people with my exact model of router having identical symptoms. Here are two threads about it:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=5276.0

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=6499

I really need working repositories to get along with linux. If Kubuntu isn't capable of doing this then i may have to consider changing distro, which would be a shame because i'm really taking to Kubuntu. It has so much character.

It seems that there is a problem with IPv6 and some D Link routers. So i tried this:

http://ubuntuos.wordpress.com/2006/0...efox-internet/

I'm afraid that didn't work for me, i lost internet connectivity altogether. I rebooted 4 times but got no internet, so i deleted the new bad_list file i'd created and rebooted. Firefox found my homepage instantly.

It seems my D-Link router is causing problems for Kubuntu and i don't know why. I can't stick with a distro that requires half a dozen reboots every time i need to connect to the internet, and no repositories. One guy switched to Fedora and had no more problems. Maybe i'll do that.

Another guy having problems with the DSL-504T said this:

"Initially I had problems getting it working with Linux (I use Fedora Core 3) - the router's DNS server couldn't handle IPV6-mapped addresses. So I set it up to use static IP addressing and manually configured DNS in Linux using the servers listed in the router's log file. It's now working a treat. (I'm new to Linux and networking, so the lingo might not be accurate - apologies.)"

If someone could put that in a language i could understand, with a step by step, i'd be more than willing to give it a go..