Firefox 5.0 is Out - Installing the x86_64 Version on Linux

I was reading an article on Slashdot that said Firefox 4 is being discontinued. Since I don't use Firefox by default, I've been pretty much using Chrome, this caused me to take a look at what version I was running on my workstation which is Fedora 11 at the moment; version 3.5.9, which is the one the repository has for yum install.

So, I guess I completely missed out on Firefox 4 - what about Firefox 5?

So - off to the Mozilla home page where I was immediately redirected to a page with a big green "Firefox - free download" button. Click the button, download the file; hmmm - where to put it?

Ooops - the button, in small print, says Linux i686 and I'm running X86_64 on my AMD quad core - wrong version??? Maybe they put both in the one download?

Un-tar the files into /usr/lib64, where the current version lives - ensuring not to crash over top of the ones already there - and use "file firefox-bin" to peer inside the file - nope, it's 32 bit - but where is the 64 bit version?

Back to Google

I found a link to Releases.Mozilla.org that let me dive down the tree to find the en-US version of the 64 bit Firefox 5 (check up the tree to ensure you get the latest release if you're reading this article much in the future)

Download this and again, un-tar it (tar -xvjf firefox-5.0.tar.bz2)

Instructions on how to install??? The README.txt simply points to http://getfirefox.com/releases/ which redirects me to the mozilla site with the (incorrect) download button for the i686 version - not helpful.

OK - if they follow form, then there will be a script file in the directory that starts things up - and there is, called "firefox" (the real binary is firefox-bin)

Look inside it to see where it expects things to live - and it says "moz_libdir=/usr/local/lib/firefox-5.0" - so I move the un-tar'd directory from /usr/lib64/firefox to /usr/local/lib/firefox-5.0 

It sure would be nice if they were a bit more consistent in their programming and tar file creations - at least the tar file could have already brought in firefox-5.0 so I would not have to check that I was not crashing over top of a previous version - and only had to figure out which of the lib directories the hierarchy needed to live in.

Anyway - rename /usr/bin/firefox to /usr/bin/firefox3 and link /usr/local/lib/firefox-5.0/firefox to /usr/bin/firefox and we're done maybe?

Check that flash works - hooray, I can see the eagles at Hancock Wildlife Foundation!

I'll give this version a bit of a run through - maybe even change over from Chrome as my default.

In the mean time I hope the above helps you figure out how to install the right version if you're running 64 bit Linux. At least you'll be able to find the file.

richard