Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 5!

As a tech-enthusiast that I am, I couldn't resist trying out the alpha 5 of ubuntu 8.04, one of the early test releases for the most stable Ubuntu (they say that it will be supported for 5 years, woohoo!).

It's best not to try it out for production servers/desktops, it's not done yet, i.e. when I installed it, some applications were missing. Some of the most important (to my opinion) packages that weren't included by default were: bash-completion software-properties-gtk firefox-2

Mozilla's Firefox 3 beta is great, but it's missing add-ons, which add superior functionality to this wonderful internet browser.

It's a good thing that the maintainers at Ubuntu thought of adding it to the repositories. I know my way around things, so installing the missing packages was a breeze:
  • From the menu choose Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
  • Enter this: sudo apt-get install bash-completion software-properties-gtk firefox-2
  • Type the password associated to your account
  • Enjoy!
If you can't find a package, try enabling the extra universe and multiverse repositories. Just install "software sources" aka software-properties-gtk then go to menu System -> Administration -> Software Sources, check the boxes next to multiverse and universe and hit the OK button and then the Reload button.

If this is too much hassle for you, try searching your packages at packages.ubuntu.com
Firefox-2 can be found here, or choose your architecture and a mirror afterwards: i386 (32-bit) or amd64/x86_64 (64-bit)
Finally, download the deb package, double click on it, and install.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hardy Heron is supposed to be Ubuntu 8.04 and to be released next month. Does that mean they anticipate firefox 3 to be released soon as well? Would 8.04 ship with a release candidate of firefox? Just wondering..

Unknown said...

Sorry I had to reply so late. I have noooo idea, but according to their plans and schedules I'd say they're pretty close to finalizing their requirements:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Schedule
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Product_Requirements_Document

Anonymous said...

Hi

I did what you said

But still, when I open firefox 2, it opens firefox 3. I erased firefox 3, anf installed only firefox 2, still have the problem. this time, I can not open firefox at all without firefox 3

Unknown said...

sudo apt-get remove --purge firefox-3.0 firefox
sudo apt-get remove --purge firefox-2
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get update
(close any windows of firefox that are open)
sudo apt-get install firefox-2

If you want to run firefox-2:
firefox-2

Change your shortcuts to point to firefox-2 instead of firefox

Anonymous said...

Hi

Thanks

I WILL TRY THIS SOLUTION, AND RETURN WITH RESULTS ASAP

Anonymous said...

Hi

I installed firefox the way you told

this time I can not install add ons, so whole point of installing it is useless now:(

I got two error messages. I have the error reports, but they are really long. If you want I can send them.

Thnx

Unknown said...

it's really awkward, because I have firefox-3.0 and firefox-2 installed, I ran firefox-2 with no problems, even my addons such as gmail manager were working perfectly.