Is Seamonkey no longer supported by Ubuntu?
 

I have had problems recently with Firefox and a good friend advised that I give Seamonkey a try as a browser. I downloaded the program from the site to my Lenovo T400 equipped with the recent version of Xubuntu, but I could not get the program to install. My system didn't know how to open the tarball. I did, however, install Seamonkey on my desktop Mac-mini without a problem. Is there a compatibility issue with Xubuntu? Thanks for any comments.

Tarball is not a package but simply an archive (typically compressed). Tar stands for "Tape ARchive" which for all intents and purposes doesn't really apply in your case but thought I would mention it. You can think of tarballs akin to "Windows ZIP files".

You simply need to decompress it and the software is likely all in one directory ready to use (but not integrated with the system). On *Ubuntu you can use the GUI program "Ark" to open compressed files. There is also almost always a tar command installed which you can use on the terminal command line as well.

For example to extract a tar archive on the command line,

The tar installed on Ubuntu will usually automatically detect if the archive is compressed and use the appropriate method to extract the archive. tar also has a man page which you can read more about the command on the command line as well.

Press "q" to quit the man page.

If you want to install an integrated package in your *Ubuntu similar to how you describe on your Mac then you'll have to install a DEB package (short for Debian which is what Ubuntu uses as its base). A quick google search for "seamonkey deb" found a sourceforge project providing DEB downloads of seamonkey. Choose your platform (32 or 64 bit), download, and install.

SAM

Usually "tarballs" are of the form ...tar.gz or ...tar.bz2. First navigate to the folder where the tarball is sitting. Then you extract them like this:
Use one or the other of the above commands depending on what type of tarball you have.
The will be extracted to a folder typically called "blahblahblah" (or whatever your tarball is called). You can then move that folder to a convenient location. The normal place to put it is in the /opt folder.
jdk

This is good, I appreciate it. When I tried to decompress the tarball my mplayer came up in response! Why the system thought it was a video application is beyond me. So you are saying the software to decompress Seamonkey is probably already present on my system. What can I do to identify it? Also, if I use the Debian extension you mentioned, which one of that long string of versions do I select? Thanks, much appreciated.

As I said if you have the program "Ark" you can decompress it like any other GUI utility. Find it however you find other GUI programs. If you mean how do you open a terminal then that varies on the system and I'm not sure I can help you much there. You can google "terminal application XYZ" where XYZ is your distro.

errrrrr

?

I tried all of the above terminal scripts and none of them were successful. It just doesn't recognize the Seamonkey files.
What else to try?

Maybe try right-click, Open With, Archive Manager?

(I am not an Ubuntu user but I think it comes with the "file-roller" archive manager, or at least it used to. ;))

Thanks, but that one didn't work either.

I spoke with a friend and showed him the various solutions that have been offered here. He said these scripts will work for some tarballs but not all. In particular, he said, they will not work for tarballs that contain installation scripts which are common these days. He said you also may have dependencies that are not met. In other words, it sounds like Ubuntu isn't making this easy for whatever the reason. I'm not tech savvy so if this involves extensive building of the program, I'm probably not the one to do it. I couldn't find that "Ark" program--is it conceivable it could be called something else?

Can you be more specific than "it didn't work" so we can maybe try to help troubleshoot?

If the tarball gives error messages and cannot be extracted with "tar" or archive-management applicatons such as file-roller or ark, then you might consider the possibility that the download was corrupted, and try downloading the file again.

Alternately you could use one of the many fine browsers provided and supported by Ubuntu: open the Software Center and type 'browser' to get dozens of suggestions you can easily install with a couple of mouse clicks. :)

The message came up on the terminal that no such file or package was recognized. No, I tried downloading Seamonkey three times and it was no different from one try to the next. I'm sure the downloads were fine. I was not able to find the Ark application online. What are some of the fine browsers that you have in mind? From what I've heard most are problematic, in one way or another. If Seamonkey is still operational, there must be a way to open it. I just haven't figured out what it is yet! Thank you for your input!

If you copy & paste the terminal output here, we might be able to interpret it for you.

Generally speaking "no such file" means you have typed the file name incorrectly. A common mistake would be that the download is in a different directory than the one you are currently in. So for example, if you downloaded the tarball to Downloads, then you would need to:

Or as I mentioned before, you can install file-roller with a few easy mouse clicks in the Software Center, then you should be able to right-click on your tarball and choose Open With, Archive Manager. Software Center is your friend. :)

Seamonkey was never supported by Ubuntu. It started as a Mozilla project, but Mozilla abandoned it years ago. An independent group started further development, but I haven't heard of much happening in a long time. But if you really want to use it, it shouldn't be that hard to get it, if you learn some basic Linux tasks. The official installation instructions are here.

Ah, so there is a problem of compatability. Back to Snowpine's point, however, I do have Archive Manager already installed on my system. It's what came up when I put in "file-roller" so that's what it's now called. So do you think if I clicked on the tarball it would open through Archive Manager. To sgosnell's point, if Seamonkey isn't supported by Ubuntu would there be problems with installing it? Lacking support, that probably means there would be no updates, correct? Seamonkey is supposed to be very good...are there other browsers that are compatible with Ubuntu that are worthwhile? I've heard Opera is dated and Chromium is very buggy. I'm thinking now that even if I can get Seamonkey installed there will be no subsequent support. I appreciate this feedback, truly!