General application installation help needed
 

I am a newbie with Linux and have been in the Windows world far too long. I am trying to install Firefox and Thunderbird onto a Fedora Core 2 distro and am experiencing some problems.

I want to use the GUI to get around at first and then learn the CLI. My problem is...If I am running an installer (such as Firefox 1.0PR or Webmin) under a GUI and it prompts me for a location to install into, where is the best place for such applications to be installed? I know that there are directories like /bin, /usr, etc., but which is the best to use for installations of miscellaneous applications like Firefox. By misc. apps I am referring to those which are not part of a distro like apache, MySQL, etc.

When I have let the Firefox installation complete with default settings for path (the /downloads directory the package was saved to) it gives me no errors but I cannot seem to find a way to launch Firefox. I have tried to search the drive for "firefox" but cannot launch anything but the installer again.

I am so accustomed to the Windows world of "program files" or a dir of my choice and I can easily find the executable from wherever I installed it and can make a shortcut for it anywhere. I am looking for such insite with Linux. All help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

"Generally" files are installed, or rather their binaries are installed to /bin /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin if they are to be able to be exected by a user (meaning it's not a super user application, such as useradd or fdisk). These directories are within what is known as your $PATH variable. If you open up a command line and type 'echo $PATH' without the ' marks, you'll reveal your $PATH variable.
To 'execute' a binary, if it's in your $PATH, you simply have to type the name of the binary, or create a symlink to a name easy to remember. So if firefox's binary is called 'ffox' and it's easier to remember firefox, you can create a symlink like so:
whereis ffox
And it will reveal the location within your $PATH of the ffox binary. From there, you can:
ln -sf /usr/bin/ffox /usr/bin/firefox
And from that point on, to execute ffox you can type either ffox or firefox.

HTH

Cool

Thanks MasterC. Here is what happened when I did as you directed.

[root@localhost root]# whereis ffox
ffox:
[root@localhost root]# ln -sf /usr/bin/ffox /usr/bin/firefox
[root@localhost root]# firefox
bash: firefox: command not found
[root@localhost root]# ffox
bash: ffox: command not found

I then reran the installation with the installation directory of /bin/firefox. I then tried the commands again and the same result.

Here is my $PATH that shows /bin is indeed in my path so I should be able to launch ffox from the above commands.

[root@localhost root]# echo $PATH
/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin

Still does not launch.

I just drilled down into the /bin/firefox directory and found it empty. There are no errors during the installation though. What gives?

I wondered the same thing. I found that "mozilla-firefox" did the trick for me. Have you tried that at the prompt?

Declan

I just tried mozilla-firefox in the terminal. Same blank response. Tried a whereis on the same and nothing came back.

I used ffox as an example, I am not sure the name of the executable for firefox...

Cool

Thanks for the follow up help.

What is most wierd in this problem is that I can complete the installation without any message dialog of either an error or success but when I open the folder that was created as part of installation (i.e. /usr/bin/firefox) the folder is completely empty of any files.

I have downloaded the installables several times to confirm an accurate file for installation. Is it just my Win experience that makes me think there should be something in the target folder after installation? I mean, it creates the folder but puts nothing in it.

Thanks.

Are you sure it's a folder it's creating or is it a binary executable? Check:
file /usr/bin/firefox

And it will output what it is.

Cool

MasterC,

I did the installation again to the following path /usr/local/bin/firefox. It again completed in a split second. Browsing to the path I see the firefox directory where it should be and it reads 0 files. I then did "file /usr/bin/firefox" and the output said it was a directory. Still lost here.

I just performed the same installation. Here is what I did:
Right click on gz file and click extract here
selected usr/bin/firefox from the popup dialog box
clicked on firefox-installer after it extracted
chose my installation options
it autostarted (you can also click on firefox from the directory)