{"id":510,"date":"2010-03-13T19:42:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-14T01:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=510"},"modified":"2010-03-14T14:42:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-14T20:42:46","slug":"ive-finally-upgraded-firefox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=510","title":{"rendered":"I’ve finally upgraded Firefox!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is actually exciting news on Linux.\u00a0 As much as I love Linux, there’s one thing I can not stand about it.\u00a0 The way that software gets installed is a fucking mess.<\/p>\n

I’ve learned the hard way that unless you are a Linux programmer, you shouldn’t try to install anything outside of what your distro offers in its repositories.\u00a0 You can download Linux programs from anywhere on the net, but unless you’re prepared to get down and dirty with arcane commands in a Terminal window, you won’t be able to install them like you would on a Windows system.<\/p>\n

So since I’m using Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” on this computer, I didn’t have access to the latest version of Firefox.\u00a0 And since I run Windows XP inside VirtualBox on this computer while I use it, I’m running two operating systems at once.\u00a0 And that takes up lots and lots of system resources.<\/p>\n

So I need every boost I can get in performance.\u00a0 The Linux versions of Firefox have been dreadfully slow compared to what the lucky Windows users get.\u00a0 However, Windows users can still get drive-by malware just by visiting infected web pages, so Linux users have security that Windows users will never know.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the way I was finally able to get the very latest build of Firefox took some searching on the net.<\/p>\n

Long story short, here’s how I did it for Jaunty.<\/p>\n

I opened up my “Software Sources” interface and added the following lines:<\/p>\n

deb http:\/\/ppa.launchpad.net\/ubuntu-mozilla-daily\/ppa\/ubuntu jaunty main<\/pre>\n
deb-src http:\/\/ppa.launchpad.net\/ubuntu-mozilla-daily\/ppa\/ubuntu jaunty main<\/pre>\n
This gives me the very latest build.\u00a0 The cutting fucking edge, man.<\/p>\n
To get the latest stable build, the lines would be as follows:<\/p>\n
deb http:\/\/ppa.launchpad.net\/mozillateam\/firefox-stable\/ubuntu jaunty main<\/pre>\n
deb-src http:\/\/ppa.launchpad.net\/mozillateam\/firefox-stable\/ubuntu jaunty main<\/pre>\n
Once that’s done, the Software Sources app will re-scan the list of installed software and give out an error about a missing key.\u00a0 To fix that I opened a Terminal window and pasted in this command:<\/p>\n
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE<\/pre>\n
Then it was a matter of downloading and installing the newest version of Firefox:<\/p>\n
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5<\/pre>\n
sudo apt-get update<\/pre>\n
And with that, I now use the MUCH faster and lighter version, currently version 3.6.2pre.<\/p>\n
Cutting fucking edge man!<\/p>\n
I only lost functionality with one of my plugins, which I can actually live without.\u00a0 Of course, If I get into problems with bugs, I can always just switch to the “stable” version.<\/p>\n
It’s nice to see a browser on this computer that starts up instantly and closes instantly too… I haven’t used it for long, but I’ll rant and ramble about it here if anything goes awry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is actually exciting news on Linux.\u00a0 As much as I love Linux, there’s one thing I can not stand about it.\u00a0 The way that software gets installed is a fucking mess. I’ve learned the hard way that unless you are a Linux programmer, you shouldn’t try to install anything outside of what your distro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,6],"tags":[195,554,555],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-linux","category-ubuntu","tag-firefox","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}