home | list info | list archive | date index | thread index

Re: [OCLUG-Tech] upgrading browser

On 03/10/2010 06:22 PM, Marlene Harris wrote:
Hello to everyone

I currently run Mandriva 2008, with Firefox 2.0.0.6., which is quite
outdated now. I want to upgrade the browser to the most recent, version 3.6,
but I do not want to upgrade Mandriva at this time.  If I install the new
browser, will I retain all my current settings? We were going to do the
install from the Firefox home page, but reading the Firefox instructions, it
seemed  as if it would be an entire reinstall that would not retain the
current settings. It also mentions dependencies which we won't know until we
try to install; at that point we probably will not be able to get back
online to obtain them.

Has anyone got any experience in this matter?

I did it all the time. Go to the firefox download site, download the tarball, then install it in some convenient place (like /opt/local). There are install instructions in the tarball. If you install it over the existing copy of firefox, you risk having your copy clobbered whenever the mandriva update mechanism decides to update the old 2.0 version. Once you have untarred it to some convenient place, use that one. You may have to update your path and you may want to change /usr/bin/firefox if it is a symlink. Firefox should update your bookmarks. However, themes and other add-ons may will chucked over the side, although it may try to update things as much as possible. V3 addons will not work with the V2 browser. The truly paranoid would back up there existing .mozialla/.firefox/.whatever it's called directory before launching the new browser :-)



references