Let’s face it. Rebranded software (Icedove for Thunderbird and Iceweasel for Firefox) on Debian works, but they are UBER old. And if you are trying to get 64 bit versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. Good luck!
IceWeasel (rebranded Firefox Version 3!) is pre-installed. However Icedove does NOT come pre-installed.
The programmes on the mozilla site, are 32 bit critters. Which don’t always work in a 64 bit environment.
As a minimum, if you want to use the 32 bit Firefox or Thunderbird off the mozilla site, you will need to have at least the following 32 bit libraries installed on your 64 bit system:
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk
Fortunately, I ran into Diopter on #debian on freenode.org
Here is where the latest stable 64 bit version are stored:
NOTE: IF YOU GET A 404 NOT FOUND, IT MEANS THAT THEY HAVE TAKEN THE SITE OFFLINE FOR AWHILE. TRY AGAIN LATER.
For the latest stable 64 bit Firefox
For the latest stable 64 bit Thunderbird
I have had some issues with the stable releases. So I use the nightly builds.
Nightly build for 64 bit Firefox (unstable)
Nightly build for 64 bit Thunderbird (unstable)
1. Once you have them downloaded, lets untar them to the right directory.
cd /usr/local
2. Now untar:
sudo tar -xjvf ~/Downloads/(name of file goes here)
-x says we want to extract the tar
-j says it is a bzip2 file
-v says we want verbose (lots of) output
-f says use archive mode
3. Rename the old “firefox” (icedove) in /usr/bin
NOTE that the # and anything that follows is a comment and does not need to be coded.
cd /usr/bin # go to /usr/bin directory
sudo mv firefox firefox.icedove
4. Now create a link to the new Firefox we just installed. I want it system wide so we need to create a symlink in /usr/bin to where the files are stored.
As always the octothorpe (# is a comment and need NOT be coded)
For Firefox:
cd /usr/bin #change to the usr/bin director
sudo ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox .
or /usr/local/thunderbird/thunderbird
NOTE: THE PERIOD AT THE END IS SIGNIFICANT. IT SAYS PLACE THE PROGRAM (SYMLINK) RIGHT HERE!
5. to confirm that you have everything right:
which firefox
and you will get output that looks like:
/usr/bin/firefox
(or thunderbird)
If you go to /usr/bin and do an ls -l you will see:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 May 5 19:01 firefox -> /usr/local/firefox/firefox
(or thunderbird)
Thanks Joe and Loni!
Wayno
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2 users responded in this post
Thanks, I was trying to install in a different directory, and the whole LD_LIBRARY_PATH mayhem was a headache.. I’ve properly dope slapped myself.. Installing into /usr/local is much simpler…
Thanks for the link to 64bit builds!