Firefox2 [solved]

[Greg2]

Maybe it just isn't available on Mandy 2006.

I don't believe you're going to find firefox2.x.x.x in the 2006 repos?

[banjo]

I did finally search for "firefox" and the highest version it came up with was 1.5.

 

Is is possible to install a 2.x on Mandy 2006? If so, where can I get it? What if I download from the firefox site?

 

This is all so confusing.

 

Thanks for the help.

Maybe I will just wait until I do the next upgrade. It gives me an excuse to upgrade the hardware at the same time.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

P.S. From the Firefox site:

Linux kernel - 2.2.14 with the following libraries or packages minimums:

 

* glibc 2.3.2

* gtk+2.0

* XFree86-3.3.6

* fontconfig (also known as xft)

* libstdc++5

 

I need to check that my system will satisfy this. Anybody know a quick way to check this? rpm -q just tells me that most of them are not installed, which is not true since I am running KDE.

Edited August 2, 2007 by banjo

[adamw]

There is no official package of 2.x for 2006. 2006 is just too old, we're not building packages for it any more, it's unsupported. 2007 is the earliest release for which you can find an official 2.x package (in /main/backports).

 

You can try installing it by downloading from www.mozilla.org.

[banjo]

adamw,

 

Thanks for the reply. I was suspecting that was the case.

 

I see this as a hole in the urpmi scheme of building apps packages for releases. It may provide a guarantee that the apps will work, but it also forces the user to upgrade the entire OS in order to continue upgrading the apps. That is a royal pain for those of us who just want to use the system for a while. Here is the list of Windows OS's that you can (supposedly) install Firefox 2 onto:

 

* Windows 98

* Windows 98 SE

* Windows ME

* Windows NT 4.0

* Windows 2000

* Windows XP (Recommended)

* Windows Vista

 

I am not defending fnWindows. I imagine that installing FF2 on Win98 will not work all that well. But...... If I am still running a Win2000, I suspect that it would work OK. 'Nuff said.

 

I will probably upgrade to 1.5 (yep.... I haven't even done *that* yet LOL) or just live with what I have until I make my new computer in a couple of years.

 

Thanks to all

Linux rocks!

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[daniewicz]

banjo:

 

It is easy to install the latest firefox using a download from www.mozilla.org. There is no need to limit yourself to older versions. Have a look at this thread:

 

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=35414&hl=

[tyme]

It may provide a guarantee that the apps will work, but it also forces the user to upgrade the entire OS in order to continue upgrading the apps. That is a royal pain for those of us who just want to use the system for a while.

Do you expect the companies that make distributions to support there software forever? They can only support a certain version for so long.

 

 

Here is the list of Windows OS's that you can (supposedly) install Firefox 2 onto:

 

* Windows 98

* Windows 98 SE

* Windows ME

* Windows NT 4.0

* Windows 2000

* Windows XP (Recommended)

* Windows Vista

And here's a list of Linux distributions/versions you can install Firefox on: All of them. I mean, just because Mandriva doesn't make an RPM, doesn't mean you can't install it. It just means Mandriva stopped supporting that version of their distribution (You're list includes 5 versions MS no longer supports).

[willie]

It's not a matter of "luck"... some extensions for 1.X won't work for 2.X and vice versa, and the configuration of these two editions ( about:config in the FF address bar ) is not identical - so there WILL be problems. But how serious they will be remains to be seen, and depends on usage.

Safest is using different user profiles- in that case you can use many FF instances without any danger.

I forgot i installed the 2.0 version voor 2006 build by MCNL and that installed along 1.5

[adamw]

banjo: it's not a problem of package management or the repository system: we have the /backports system, which covers that issue perfectly well. It's more to do with manpower - we just don't have the developer resources to work on backports for more than two or three releases at a time - and the pace of Linux development as compared to Windows, which means that 2006 is a substantially different environment compared to 2007 or 2007 Spring. If we had more people or developed at a slower rate, we could do backports for more releases at a time.

[banjo]

Please don't think that I am complaining. I am trying to understand how this system works. I read somewhere in here that one should always upgrade via the repositories to make sure that the app will work. I guess that is not always true.

 

Do you expect the companies that make distributions to support there software forever? They can only support a certain version for so long.

 

I am not expecting support for 2006. I am not reporting a bug that needs to be fixed, I just want to install an upgraded version of an application. That is not "support" for the OS. That is just installing an application.

 

And here's a list of Linux distributions/versions you can install Firefox on: All of them.

 

That is quite an impressive list. :D I think I like it!

 

I guess I need some more education on installing these things. The answer seems to be to download Firefox 2 from the firefox site and install it that way.

 

BTW I am in no danger of going back to fnWindows. I bailed out on that about 4 years ago and have never looked back. I just get confused at all of the ways of upgrading things on Linux.

 

Thanks to everybody for all the information. I will look into the other methods to get my Firefox.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~