Debain Squeeze - Iceweasel Release - Firefox Deb packages

v 0.3
Sep 2011

Whilst I love the Debian Stable concept, it does become limiting when you wish to use rapidly evolving software.  Certainly this is where the Debian Backports service came about, though I seriously need to get into it and see how I can use it for useful updates.

I the meantime, over the last few days I have stumbled on two up-to-date incarnations of Firefox that are packaged as debs for, or compatible with Squeeze.

• The first, up-to-date Iceweasel is available from http://mozilla.debian.net/ .  At time of writing it is Iceweasel 5.0.  Icedove is also available.
• The Second is GNU Icecat available from http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ .  Deb packages for Ubuntu are available from https://launchpad.net/~gnuzilla-team/+archive/ppa .  Squeeze is compatible with the Lucid Lynx (or whatever it was) version of Ubuntu for this application.  Clicking the "View Package Details" link lets you view what is available.  Debs are there for both 32 bit and 64 bit.

Of course, as I have written about earlier, you can always download the Linux binary from the Firefox download yourself and simply install it manually.  I have come to regard "Opt" as the most convenient place to put it, as several other packages do also.


Later ...........

Update 9 Aug 11

I was disappointed to see the Debian access to the latest iceweasel is far less than before.  Tried installing the latest release and it failed due to library problems.  (see below ... my mistake )

On the positive side, I

1. downloaded the Firefox tarball from the Firefox site, and as root unpacked it in "/opt" .  
2. added firefox to the menu system with "alacarte" from a root terminal.

When I executed firefox, it worked fine - no other action needed, so I un-installed iceweasel using synaptic.  Very pleased with the result.

Also .... NOTE the version of Iceweasel that is included with Debian Squeeze is no longer supported by Google in their products.


Update 16 Sep 11

Had my faith in the Debian Mozilla team enlightened.

http://mozilla.debian.net/

Follow the directions.

If you use the command line like they say, it will work .. when I followed the directions rather than using synaptic it worked fine.  The trick is  the " -t" option in the command line.  Once you use it, updates will work fine.  You just have to get it working in the terminal.


Later ....