Howto install Firefox 3 Beta 2 in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Posted by admin on December 24th, 2007 
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These beta releases are targeted to Web developers and our testing community to gain feedback before advancing to the next stage in the release process. The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users.
Firefox 3 Features
Firefox 3 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 28 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.
More Features check here
Installing Firefox3.0 beta2 in ubuntu
Preparing your system
sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
Now you need to take backup of your old firefox prferences
sudo cp -R ~/.mozilla ~/.mozillabackup
Now you need to download firefox 3.0b2 from here
Now you have firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2 file
Unzip the .tar.bz2 file in /opt directory using the following command
sudo tar -C /opt -jxvf firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2
Now you need to link the plugins using the following command
cd /opt/firefox/plugins/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/* .
Now you need to create a link to your new firefox launcher using the following command
sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/firefox
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox
This will complete the installation of firefox 3.0b2
If you want to open firefox 3 beta 2 go to Applications—>Internet—>Firefox Web Browser
Once you open first time you should see similar to the following screen
Firefox 3.0 beta 2 in Action
Firefox Version Details
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December 24th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Thanks,
This post helped me alot
December 26th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
if i understood correctly it replaces the existing installation?(at the end you have only one firefox icon in the menu… but it may mean nothing)
Q1: have i to uninstall the old installation first?
Q2: is it possible to have both 2.0 and 3b2?if yes how?
thx!
December 26th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
this will replace the existing installation this is only beta release do not install in you production systems
q1.Not required the above procedure will replace
q2.yes, i need to check this
December 26th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I did some shit. As it is told, the new installation replaced the old one. That would be no problema, if the flash player worked in firefox 3.0.
Could you please post a how to get back the old version or the solution to flash player?
December 27th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
In my Gutsy for Fiorefox Flash to work this line
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/* .
has to be changed to
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/* .
Default directory has different name. And btw how to remove Firefox beta 2 completely ? Its very heavy on my CPU when I open more than 3 or 4 tabs.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:06 am
It would be really great if you could (soon) publish a new guide: howto install firefox 3 beta 2 alongside firefox 2!!
(you may post the uninstalling instructions too)
thank you for your effort!
December 29th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
What do you see when you go to about:plugins ? Do you see all of the plugins that you see for firefox 2? I can’t figure out how to get my old plugins to register.
Thanks!
December 30th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I’ve tried installing like this on my ubuntu 7.04 and it’s not working (it says “file doesn’t exist” when I try to start firefox, but there is firefox folder in /opt and I’ve checked all commands twice, I did everything like you said)
Are there any additional steps for 7.04? What can i check to see what I did wrong?
Or, can you tell me how to undo all that, so I can have my FF2 back?
(please, as simple as you can - I’m a designer, and I’m using ubuntu just for testing my websites, my knowledge for installing new things stops at apt-get…
December 31st, 2007 at 10:55 pm
NONE of my plugins work now, especially JAVA. Can you PLEASE post a method of removing Firefox 3 Beta 2?
January 20th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Firefox 3 Beta 2 w Ubuntu…
Zachciało mi się poeksperymentować z najnowszą betą Firefoksa 3. Po rozpakowaniu i uruchomieniu okazało się, że spora grupa rozszerzeń nie jest jeszcze kompatybilna z najnowszą wersją przeglądarki, na co zresztą byłem przygotowany. Z jav….
January 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I managed to roll back to Firefox 2 by doing:
Code:
$ sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox
$ sudo rm /opt/firefox
$ sudo dpkg-divert –rename –remove /usr/bin/firefox
$ sudo apt-get install firefox –reinstall
I will wait for the official Firefox 3 release. I looking forward to it but I can not stand a minute without AdBlock.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
With me the terminal says when I try to unpack the tar.bz2:
tar: firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
What is the problem?????
kind regards, Chris
January 31st, 2008 at 5:12 pm
tar: firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directorytar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
Same problem! With the instruction
sudo tar -C /opt -jxvf firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2somthing wrong…
January 31st, 2008 at 6:34 pm
This is really annoying: I cant get the flash plug-in to work, nor can I reinstall FF2.
This how-to sucks…
January 31st, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Chris and Darkshade,
Either cd into the directory that contains your downloaded firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2 file or specify the path to this file in your command. That is:
either do the following if firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2 was saved to, for instance, your Desktop:
cd ~/Desktop
and then do sudo tar -C /opt -jxvf firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2
OR
do
sudo tar -C /opt -jxvf ~/Desktop/firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Hi I have a dual boot win/ubuntu laptop. I’ve just installed Firefox 3 Beta 2 on Windows in a single simple step (double click the exe). Why is this task so bizantine in Ubuntu?
February 5th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
You can unzip the tar.gz file and install firefox 3 in a similiar fashion to it’s windows counter part. This is just provides a more elegant install.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
You can now install the latest Beta RC by enabling backports and then apt-get’ing firefox-3.0. This is the best way to do the install as it won’t replace or override your firefox 2 install - it will even make new ~/.mozilla/firefox-3.0 profile settings (although it will import your settings from firefox 2, it won’t replace them).
to install your plugins (eg, flash), just sudo cp /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/* /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins (or ln -s, either will work)
i’d definitely recommend doing the install this way, as you won’t have any problems with this beta 3 replacing your stable 2 (although as far as i can tell, 3 is definitely stable enough now for normal use)
February 15th, 2008 at 6:57 am
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuufff
ok this was a great experience for me, I tried then it worked but, I couldn’t see any movies or anything so I wanted to go back then I had to try Chris how to, to go back to firefox 2, after I found out that Grandparadiso ****”"”"is”"”"**** firefox beta3
thanks anyways
February 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
try this for flash plugin make it work thanks to daniel
To get Flash working in FF3, run this command
sudo cp /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/* /usr/lib/firefox3preb3/plugins
March 28th, 2008 at 6:14 am
i was trying to install firefox 3 beta 4, but i screwed my firefox 2.1
now i have only firefox 3 that is very unstable how can i get rid of if and go back to firefox 2.1. H E L P.
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:21 am
Great ! tnks it helps me a lot !
June 19th, 2008 at 1:08 am
It works with firefox 3 final on ubuntu 7.10 gutsy too.
Thanks.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Well, i have tried to install firefox 3 three times with three different ways of doing it and I still have firefox 2 installed. Not sure what’s going wrong.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Hehehehe
apt-get install firefox-3.0
baybay…
June 29th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I wrote a couple of script to automate the install: http://www.blogmanno.com/?q=node/72
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
hey i follow the instructions for the installation, but it was firefox 3.0, everything came out as expected but one thing, all the information about bookmarks, themes, home page was lost.
is there something im not doing well of i need to retrieve that?
thanks for the help !!
September 18th, 2008 at 6:02 am
How do you get tor to work? When I check my ip from a website, it’s still identifying the old browser when tor is activated, even though I’m connecting with FF3 (yes, I checked help/about to be sure)