How do i make firefox 3 work after installing firefox 2 on Ubuntu 8.04
 

Hi all,

In the process of making .mht files work on Ubuntu 8.04, i installed firefox2 from the link http://www.debianadmin.com/install-f...ed-addons.html.

I can manually execute firefox-3.0 from the command line, but if i open firefox from the main menu I firefox-2.0. How do i change this? I have to make sure all the LTSP users get this as well!

Thanks
Avinash

Where did you get Firefox 3 from? If it was from Mozilla, then you downloaded binary compiled files, and all you need to do is install as root. That will make FF3 available to all users.

The main menu needs to be edited to point it to FF3, not FF2. You didn't say what desktop you are running. KDE has a menu edit option, you can start it by a right click on the 'start' and the option to edit the menu is there.

Another option is to create a desktop icon to point to FF3. For KDE you right click the desktop, --> Create New --> Link to Application and fill in the information, just use the path and command that works from the command line.

I'm not as familiar with Gnome, so if you are using that, I know there is a menu editor, can't tell you what it is called, have a good look, you should find it...

Also you can try the ALT+F2 method to start applications. When you press that key combination, a small window will appear, where you can type the name of a program you want to start. If you type 'firefox' here, FF2 will start. If you type 'firefox3' FF3 will start.
Another method is also known: wipe FF2 from your computer and only FF3 will start then. I think you can get rif of FF2 now, since FF3 is very good (better than FF2), and I don't see why anybody want to keep FF2 now.

I got FF3 when i installed the OS on the beginning. I am using Ubuntu studio 8.04 on AMD 64 hardware with LTSP configured. I installed Firefox 2 because i wanted to configure it to use .mht files. But, FF3 got corrupted i guess. Cox, in the link there are commands that changes the link to FF2.
Anyway, the current status is that i have uninstalled FF3 and FF2 completely from synaptic package manager. I rebooted the machine. I installed FF3 again. The browser didn't work, so i installed FF2. FF2 works, but if i try to open FF3, it gives me an error "No child process", mozilla directory doesn't exists.

Any ideas!
Avinash

thanks for the tip. But, i guess the LTSP users wont like to do this all the time :D

OK. If you want a more simple method, than you can do the following: Place shortcut icons onto the desktop, so users can choose between FF2 and FF3 if they want (this means one icon for FF2 and another for FF3). In the shortcut settings you can set the command you want to execute, so in the first icon type 'firefox' and in the other 'firefox3'. It is simple this way.

FF3, for me, was a big disappointment. I switched to FF2, and completly removed FF3. It was crashing constantly, would frequently lock up when I was closing a tab, etc.

I ended up installing SeaMonkey 1.1.9, which thus far, has been awesome. Ive been a longtime advocate of FF, but FF3 really disappointed me.

IGF

Thanks for your replies. But, i am still not able to open FF3. The error is
Cannot Launch Application: Failed to execute child process "firefox" (no such file or directory)

avinash.rao, this sounds like a path type problem. If you open a konsole, and navigate to the directory where firefox 3 is, on my system that is /usr/lib/firefox/ the is a shell script called firefox. That is what launches firefox. So the command '/usr/lib/firefox/firefox' launches the program.

Find the directory path to the shell, type it in, and try. If that doesn't work, then you have a problem with the installation. If it does work, then modify the desktop icon with the command that works. I also added a working directory for firefox, to /usr/lib/firefox. I don't think that is necessary, but it doesn't hurt either.

If you do have a installation problem, manually delete the directories and files, and re-install.

I saw comments about FF3 crashing. Usually this is caused by add ons, not FF itself. FF3 has been rock solid since I installed it. Test it by itself, add-ons should be added one at a time, just in case you get a buggy one.

Only add-on I had, was a Youtube video downloader.. it was flawless on FF2, but FF3 was buggy for me, even w/o it.

Good suggestion though..

IGF

If you have both version 2 and 3 installed and both work, but running Firefox launches version 2 instead of 3, it might be just a symbolic link thing. The "firefox" file that is executed when you click FF icon is not really an executable, but a (symbolic) link that points to the real executable, a script or even another symbolic link.
See that -- the file "firefox" that gets executed when you click the icon actually points to firefox-3.0 here. In your case it could point to firefox-2.0; if you instead want it to point to firefox-3.0 (and thus launch version 3 when you click the menu icon), remove and re-create the link as you wish:
That would make "firefox" point to "firefox-3.0"; if you want it to launch version 2, just alter the link.

If you have trouble with the installations, remove the packages (versions 2 and 3 if you have installed both using apt) along with their configuration files:
Then reinstall and see if it helped. Without the purge option all files are not necessarily removed.