Neill,
Ok, I'll move it to new dir 'software'. Then do i run './firefox &'
Will this install it in the new dir? My learning curve is vertical
here and very slippery.
Stuart
No.
Let's start from scratch to make sure everything should work.
1. If you no longer have the firefox-1.5.0.2.tar.gz file download it
again from
the firefox website. Save it to your Desktop. (This is to make sure you
haven't accidentally moved components out of the original folder which
will stop this from working).
2. unzip and extract the files. There are two ways to do this, either using
the GUI (double-click on it and extract) or with command lines. I'll
show you
these to help your learning curve (and talk as though you know nothing so
this may well be patronising - sorry if it is).
cd ~/Desktop
gzip -d firefox-1.5.0.2.tar.gz
This will uncompress the file (all .gz files are compressed with gzip
and the
-d flag means decompress. Other types of compressions exist and you need
to learn which ones are which. Using the GUI should make that automatic).
3. Then you want to "untar" the archive. tar stands for Tape ARchive and
is used
often when you want to back up whole directories to tape (or wherever).
To understand tar a little bit better you can look at the "man" page
(manual).
Unfortuately these are renowned for being terse and often only make
sense when you know
what you want in the first place. To do that type
man tar
and to understand man better type
man man
A second source of info on the system is "info". Often that gives you
the man
page, but with some of the more common commands you get more information.
Anyway, back to the tar. Type
tar -xvf firefox-1.5.0.2.tar
(the .gz file will be gone and you will have the .tar one left).
The -x means extract, the -v verbose - so you can see what it is doing,
and the -f
means the file name that follows.
You should now have a directory called firefox on the desktop.
4. Believe it or not, you have completed installation. Firefox doesn't
have installer programs
like many programs do. So that is it ... except it's not very
convenient. If you want proof, type
the following
~/Desktop/firefox/firefox
(you don't need the ampersand & as it runs other files and returns
quickly - ah on a quick side
track ... the & at the end of a command means run it in the background -
with the shell returning
to you for further input. You only need to use it when you want to put
programs to run
in the background. This is not that often. You need to understand "Job
Control" to learn how
to use &, fg, bg, kill etc - type man bash and read the Job Control bit.
Better still, get yourself
a basic book on linux - you are on the bottom part of a pretty steep
slope and you will do
yourself no end of favours if you understand the basics. Linux is
fantastic but it is nothing if
not technical) On another side note the ~ is shorthand for "my home
directory".
Let's not keep firefox on your Desktop though. Create a directory called
software and put it there.
Type
mkdir ~/software
mv -r ~/Desktop/firefox ~/software
(Note the -r in move - Desktop/firefox is a directory - the -r means
recursive - in other words
all subdirectories etc in the folder). Now type
cd ~/software
ls
and you should see the firefox directory inside the software one.
5. Make it more convenient.
Ok, now you need to understand how linux looks for programs. This is the
PATH environment
variable I mentioned before. Type
echo $PATH
to see what it contains. You will see a series of paths like
/usr/bin:/bin: - the colons separate
different paths. What you will notice is that PATH does NOT contain
/home/stuart/Desktop/firefox
so if you type the command firefox by itself in a shell it will say
firefox: Command not found.
because it only looks in PATH to find the executables. Mandriva 2006 has
scripts installed to
run their version of firefox. Type
which mozilla-firefox
and you should get
/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox
Now if you click on the Applications menu (or the Mandriva star
depending on how you have
set your panel up), then select Internet->Web Browsers and then
right-click on the Mozilla
Firefox icon, you will get a series of options. Select "Add this
launcher to Panel" and you should
see the firefox icon appear on the panel. Now right-click on the newly
added firefox icon on the
panel and select properties. You should get a dialog box appear. Under
command you should see
/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox %u
So what? Well now you can see that all that happens when you select an
application using
the menu bars, is the icon is translated into the correct path for the
executable - in this case a script
which ends up running their version of firefox.
Installation just means putting things into the expected places. In the
case of firefox, it doesn't
care where it is, just so long as everything is in the same place (its
icons, etc are all inside
the firefox folder on your Desktop). Other programs are more picky and
will have different methods
of installation.
But you can now customise that new icon on your panel. If you still have
the dialog box up, (if you
haven't then just get it up again as before) change
/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox %u
to read
/home/stuart/software/firefox/firefox %u
Don't forget the %u at the end. Apply and close the dialog. Now if you
and I have got this right if you click on the icon
it will run the new firefox in your software directory, and you will see
a browser appear.
This means that you, and only you are running the new version of
firefox. Ok so not so convenient
if there are others who want to use your machine. I'm not going to
explain to you here how to get
it so that everybody gets access to it - there are many ways and none
too straightforward given your
current level (involves root users, could involve creating aliases, or
writing your own scripts or
changing the root menu configuration, editing $PATH or other
possibilities). Before you go there,
I would buy that book and sit down for a day and learn more about linux
and UNIX in general.
Linux is very powerful, and to paraphrase Spiderman, with great power
comes great ... technicalities.
But the more you understand the basics the easier it will be.
Really hope that helps :-)
Neill
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