Installing Firefox on RPM based Linux distributions

So, I have been using Firefox for quite some time now. In fact from Nov 2004 when v 1.0 was released. There is much written about its awesomeness in many places on the web. And then I have been using Mandriva Linux from about the same time now, usually in a dual boot env with Windows.

Now whenever an update for Firefox is released, I get my Windows FF updated in a jiffy. But with Mandriva it's a different story. Both being different products with different Development and QA cycles, it takes quite some time for the official FF update to be available in Mandriva.

Of course I can always download the latest version straight from the Firefox site and use it. Installation, I thought was tricky, but now it seems easy-peasy, knowing where to put the stuffs.

Currently I am running Mageia, a forked out distro of Mandriva, while I am waiting for the 2011 Mandriva to be released. Mageia, like Mandriva uses urpmi for installing and updating RPM packages.

So, once we have the latest FF downloaded for our distro usually from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/fx/, just this is what needs to be done once we browse to the path where the firefox*.tar.bz2 file was downloaded -

[mrigs@pragjyotish Downloads]$ su
Password:
[root@pragjyotish Downloads]# tar -xvjf firefox-6.0.tar.bz2 -C /usr/lib

tar as we know is the Tape ARchiver command in Linux

And the options:
x - extract
v - verbose output (lists all files as they are extracted)
j - deals with bzipped file
f - read from a file, rather than a tape device
C - extracts to a directory path

So, these sequence of commands would extract the contents of the firefox-6.0.tar.bz2 archive and place it in the /usr/lib path in the firefox directory. The contents are usually overwritten and the folder usually retains it's permissions (755 / drwxr-xr-x). The related symlink (/usr/bin/firefox) to which all shortcuts point to, does not need any modifications.

I am using this in Mageia but the same can also be used in Mandriva and I'd assume other RPM based distros will also have the same directory structure making the aforementioned sequence of commands effective.

Happy browsing.