Firefox 3.5 coming out -- will it be in Slackware 13?
 

Hi all,

It looks like Firefox 3.5 will be coming out this week: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4430

Overall, it looks like a good improvement from the news reports. I'm particularly exited by the embedded video player that handles Ogg Theora-encoded video.

So, is it possible Firefox 3.5 will be included in Slackware 13? If not, maybe it could be available as a patch like what happened when Firefox 2 came out just after Slackware 11 did.

Pat included the update to Firefox 2.0 in the changelog with this note:

Regards,

-Drew

It's not in the current change log, but that doesn't mean that it won't ever be there. We'll just have to see what Pat does.

It's hard to say, it depends on when sw 13 comes out. If FF 3.5 is released at about the same time then it will either be included or as a patch. Probably 3.5 will be "just so cool" Pat won't be able to resist ... again :)

It is now released, I'm guessing it will be included.

Yeah, it was released just a few minutes ago, because I checked a few minutes ago and it wasn't released yet :)

Actually 3.5 seems to be noticeably faster than 3.0, and there are no compatibily issues like the 2.0 -> 3.0 switch as far as I can see. It also seems stable ... no reason not to include it.

If it ain't included, you could still install it later on? It's not so, that if it ain't in the release, it can't be installed later on?

In my opinion I think FF 3.5 would be a welcome addition to 13.0.

You can always install it.
I've been running FF 3.5 (alpha's and beta's) since months now.
No problem.

Hell, even I can.

I'm running 3,5 for about half a minute now.. Just clicked Help -> Check for updates, 3,5 popped, clicked install now, blinked and voila: 3.5

No need to squeeze FF 3.5 in SW 13.0; If it's that simple to upgrade from 3.0 to 3.5, why bother?

But that means that you're running FF as root, that's not a great idea (not much harm done if you only do that for upgrades, but don't do that by default).
If you run it as a user, the auto-upgrade mechanism won't work.
And even if you run it as root, it sometimes fails and then you still need to install it manually. ...

Even if it's not in 13 I'm sure it'll be quickly added to -current thereafter. As has been mentioned, it really isn't a 'difficult' upgrade as far as compatibility goes.

Agreed, I just used the slackware64-current slackbuild. All I had to do was edit a few lines wait for it to compile and now its working fine. I'm guessing it will make its way in but if not it really is a easy upgrade.

Daedra it doen't compile Firefox only patch and repackage then into an slackware package.

Actually the version for Slackware64 -current does compile it from source.

Yes mozilla should really release x86_64 linux builds. I find the easiest way to use Firefox 3.5 is to download the tarball from mozilla.com, untar it somewhere and then symlink the firefox binary to somewhere like ~/bin or /usr/local/bin. I've been using it for a long time this way.

Yes it does i saw it now and i didn't know that.
I stand corrected.
I need an 64bit laptop ;)

You know the build works for 32 and 64 bit right?

Just download firefox 3.5 to your home directory and untar it. Then to get all your plugins working, symlink your /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/* to firefox3.5 plugins directory:
(That is a period "." at the end of that command.)
Then cd up to ~/firefox.
Then run:
And you will be running FF 3.5. This will not affect the FF that is currently installed in Slackware 12.2.
You may want to backup your ~/.mozilla directory first in case you want to go back to FF 3.01x, although I don't think it would cause a problem either way. If it did cause problems you could just create a new profile.

I compiled it yesterday on slamd64 and it works fine (using it now).

Actually I install FF to my home directory, not that it really matters for 64-bit because it can't auto-update anyway. But for 32-bit it could auto-update itself.

Actually I don't care too much about this because I always follow the current and I believe it will be in current in a near future ;)

I have been using FF 3.5 for a few hours now. It is good, and has a few more features:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/
... but imo there is no compelling reason to want or need FF 3.5. That is, unless you just can't wait to try it out ... like me!

As root yes. As the auto-upgrade function didn't work as normal user. But still: logging on as root isn't forbidden for administrative purposes as upgrading programs :)

A failing installation is offcourse not what you want to happen, but still, I'd rather reinstall FireFox than upgrade to SW 13.0.. most probably since SW13 aint available, and FF3.5 allready is :)

The only things I now know I would like to have is KDE 4.x instead of 3.5, but that's worth the wait ( I guess/hope ) since it still only brings mostly eye candy,. and yes, a squeezy little more out-o-the-box support for wireless networks for my slacktop, since I had some trouble setting it up properly.

Excellent! I'm more excited about Slackware 13 than I have been for many of the recent releases.

Regards,

-Drew

Using firefox's AutoUpdate feature on a Slackware firefox package will make a tiny mess. If you someday remove or upgrade the firefox package, all those new files that were put in the installation directory by the AutoUpdate will not be removed with the package. You will have to remove the old install directory manually.

It really is very very easy to just take the mozilla binary source and use the official mozilla-firefox slackBuild to make your own packages (no waiting for the official Slackware release). Then upgrade firefox properly. I modified the official slackBuild so that I don't have to modify the patches for differences in version numbers and so that I can have RSS feed integration and alternate desktop icons. All I have to do is run the slackBuild with the firefox version specified and I have a new package. upgradepkg the new package. done.

Shadowsnipes,

Are you willing to share your modified SlackBuild?

Regards,

-Drew

mozilla-firefox-3.5.tar.gz

Note, I did not include the Firefox icon that I use. I use the blue one found at gnome-look.org.

With this SlackBuild you should not have to modify it between version changes. Just run it as

Probably not.. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-...5-Bugs-747510/

Most of the bugs will mostly likely be fixed within a couple of months. Regardless of whether or not it is released with Slackware 13, FF is an easy drop in package.

As usual there are bugs ... it's inevitable ... but so far I haven't hit any :)

Thats true, but only for 32bit.

Well, in the meantime you could use a similar SlackBuild to repackage swiftfox, so it would still be easy.

I just did that too. The few lines that needed changing were:

VERSION had to be changed to 3.5
ARCH had to be changed to i486
NUMJOBS had to be changed to -j3 because I only have two cores
cd mozilla had to be changed to cd mozilla-1.9.1
the mozilla-firefox-mimeTypes-fix.diff.gz patch had to be commented out
the package extension had to be changed from txz to tgz

When there will be security issues and/or improvements etc... Pat will release it on slackware 13 as he did in slackware 12.2:

:)

As there are 'lots-o' bugreports on the all-fresh-all-new FF 3.5, and there's be a major bugfix announced.. there's 2(or even 3?) options:

- SW:13 is released within a few weeks, no FF 3.5(.1?)

- SW:13 is released within a few months,. FF 3.5(.2?) will be included.

or:

- SW 13 is released without FF 3.5, SW 13.1 will feature FF 3.6.3 :)

Eitherway: it* will be ready, when it's ready :)


* as in SW:13

Check out the current changelog.

samac

Yep. Welcome news indeed! FF 3.5 is in -current. :cool:

Yes, now we're sure that firefox3.5 will be on slackware13 :D

3.5 seems OK here. Fingers crossed. Touch wood... :)

It hasn't crashed yet and I've been using ever since the minute it came out.

It's faster too, don't you think so?

It's definitely faster, especially on older machines. I just updated to 3.5 on my older laptop and it works a lot faster. On my newer machines I notice that it is faster, but the difference is less noticeable.

I found something to play with on 3.5 that I couldn't use on 3: HTML5 Drumkit:
http://www.randomthink.net/labs/html...0001000100|120

More Cowbell!!!

Yeah! Great for annoying the neighbours ( I live in a terraced house, like those on "Coronation Street"). :D

Yay!

FF 3.5 in Slack 13 - NICE!

nice indeed, but:

Why not try For me run-mozilla.sh throws up an error but firefox (from the same folder) opens FFx3.5 normally.
cheers,
jdk

works, thanks