Keeping ffox up-to-date in ubuntu based distros

slowlydownwards

Have always struggled with this. So, stumbled across this handy little how-to. Posting it here, hoping it would be beneficial for others too.

BopNiblets

Yeah always disliked this seems needlessly complex, I added the stable mozillateam PPA to software sources to Mint a while ago but that is still stuck on 3.6 for some reason.

kierank01

Is firefox not updated from the the official repositeries?

The last time I used ubuntu, it was kept upto date very well

DeepBlue

kierank01 wrote: »

Is firefox not updated from the the official repositeries

It is but it can be slow to catch up with the latest release.

loldog

kierank01 wrote: »

Is firefox not updated from the the official repositeries?

The last time I used ubuntu, it was kept upto date very well

They were a long long time going from 3.0 to 3.5, it took a good few months.

Normally I don't pay much heed but that was a major performance boost but they took ages with it... I got the upgrade from the Mozilla site anyway, but I did notice that one - how long it took Canonical to get it into their repos.

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Pygmalion

loldog wrote: »

They were a long long time going from 3.0 to 3.5, it took a good few months.

Normally I don't pay much heed but that was a major performance boost but they took ages with it... I got the upgrade from the Mozilla site anyway, but I did notice that one - how long it took Canonical to get it into their repos.

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Problem is that a lot of the time if it's a major upgrade they won't bother adding it to the repositories, they'll just wait until the next Ubuntu release to include it, which may have been what happened.

Reason I switched from Kubuntu to Arch was that they refused to upgrade the KDE in the repositories (as in 90+% of the applications I used were going to be a major release behind for several months).
You can try adding backport repositories but I've heard of a lot of instability from using packages from them.

slowlydownwards

BopNiblets wrote: »

... seems needlessly complex ...

+1

BopNiblets wrote: »

... still stuck on 3.6 ...

You've probably seen this, but there's a lot of chatter on the net about security probs with 3.6, so it mightn't be a bad idea to push it up to 3.6.2.

pickarooney

I can't seem to install Firefox 3.5+ on Jaunty without it installing as some stupidly named alt-firefox with no compatible themes or plugins, so I'm still using 3.0, which seems ridiculous to me.

Eliot Rosewater

pickarooney wrote: »

I can't seem to install Firefox 3.5+ on Jaunty without it installing as some stupidly named alt-firefox with no compatible themes or plugins, so I'm still using 3.0, which seems ridiculous to me.

Well thats my intention to try it gone

Any particular reason you're still using Jaunty?

pickarooney

Tried this method and it did the same - installs a forked firefox with partial plugin compatibility.

I'm using Jaunty because I had huge sound, video, flash and tv tuner issues with karmic on the three occasions I installed it and it offered precisely nothing of interest compared to 9.04 besides.

slowlydownwards

I'm still on Mint 7 (out-of-the-box-perty Jaunty) and the above worked fine. Karmic was very unfriendly to my 3G modem. High hopes for Lucid.

Mathiasb

It's always going to be like this in Ubuntu, with all software. Unless something critical has been found, your software won't be updated.

I prefer rolling release distributions for this reason.

pickarooney

Mathiasb wrote: »

It's always going to be like this in Ubuntu, with all software. Unless something critical has been found, your software won't be updated.

I prefer rolling release distributions for this reason.

What distros come under the category of rolling release? I'm beginning to get a bit tired of the Ubuntu 6-month cycle and the requirement to upgrade an entire OS to get a new version of taglib.

Edit: wikied it - not overly keen on moving to gentoo either...

Mathiasb

pickarooney wrote: »

What distros come under the category of rolling release? I'm beginning to get a bit tired of the Ubuntu 6-month cycle and the requirement to upgrade an entire OS to get a new version of taglib.

Edit: wikied it - not overly keen on moving to gentoo either...

I prefer Archlinux myself. Simple and elegant (and lightning fast)

Pygmalion

pickarooney wrote: »

What distros come under the category of rolling release? I'm beginning to get a bit tired of the Ubuntu 6-month cycle and the requirement to upgrade an entire OS to get a new version of taglib.

Edit: wikied it - not overly keen on moving to gentoo either...

I use Arch, it's nice, and binary packages.
Not quite the selection Ubuntu has but good enough.

Mathiasb

Pygmalion wrote: »

I use Arch, it's nice, and binary packages.
Not quite the selection Ubuntu has but good enough.

It's got quite many packages when you include AUR (Archlinux User Repository), and why shouldn't you

kierank01

+1 for arch here

installation is a little more involved, but there is an excellent install guide.
I find it much leaner than ubuntu, because you choose what services get started at startup.

I get booted in about 30 sec, it was more like a minute with ubuntu.