Update Firefox 3.5 Install To Linux

I was right about one thing and that is someone would publish what we need to get Firefox running in some Linux distro. Lifehacker comes to the rescue and pointed me to a blog, Kabatology, I would have probably never found. I will have to explore this site more fully as it looks to be rich in content. I am using Firefox 3.5 right now from the download I made the other day. I tried then to run Firefox using the ~/firefox/firefox command, but it failed each time in Mepis. In AntiX after navigating to the /home/firefox directory, I just double-clicked on the shell script file firefox and I now had Firefox running. Kabatology mentions the same command but also gave alternatives to starting Firefox in Ubuntu. One of which was double-clicking the firefox script file. Their tip was for Ubuntu and since Ubuntu is Debian based, as is Mepis and AntiX, I knew it would work for me too. I didn't have to run the wget command since I had previously downloaded Firefox. So many thanks to the Lifehacker team for finding the tip and thanks to Kabatology for sharing their knowledge.

Linux Distros Lagging In Package Updates For Firefox 3.5

I must say that I'm quite disappointed that I haven't been able to update to Firefox 3.5 in Mepis or Fedora. I've been touting the flag for these distros pretty high and I really thought I would at least see the Fedora 3.5 beta have an update available. But I ran apt-get update on Mepis and no new Firefox. Tried a yum update for Fedora and the same results. If I tried for just the package I would get no package available nothing to do. This was very frustrating since I know the Linux version is on Mozilla's website ready to go. In their support pages Mozilla does mention that the various distros do control the version upgrades for Firefox. Even the update now feature is locked out. I even checked the about:config file and it was locked there as well. I downloaded the Linux version but I can't do anything with it. I haven't given up. My guess is others are having the same trials and soon a Google search will turn up the methods. For now I rant and tomorrow I will test it out on Windows XP. I haven't had the time to even test drive it in Windows. Anyone using 3.5 now? What do you like about the new release? Did they leave out something you want?

Using Gparted

If dual booting is something you plan on doing then Gparted will become a very useful tool. Almost all distros will have this tool installed. If not it is easily aquired via most distros' repositories. Gparted stands for Gnome Partition Editor. The current release is version 0.4.5 and is also available at Sourceforge.net. Gparted can read various file systems including fat16/32, ntfs, ext2/3 and several more. If you need to create partitions, re-size them or simply format a drive, this tool can do the job. Do you need to copy or move an entire drive? Gparted can handle this too. I have only scratched the surface in my experience using Gparted. I have re-sized partitions on a laptop running Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10 on a 120GB hard drive. I was able to change the size of both partitions without data loss or downtime. Here is a view from a 20GB hard drive I am running right now. I have Puppy Linux on the first partition, Mepis 8 on the hda3 (they are out of order since I had given too much room for Puppy and used Gparted to create hda3), on hda2 is the home partition being shared by all OS's. I created an extended partition and placed logical drives within it. AntiX resides on hda7 and there are two unused spaces left over. Using Gparted to manage this hard drive makes it possible and keeps it very simple. Let's hear what tools you use to manage drives?

Ranting about Linux

Well I have been ranting on and on about Linux for a while. Right now I am posting from an old Toshiba laptop running a P3 475MHz CPU and 192MB of ram. I bought this laptop in 2000 and paying almost $2000 then. It was configured with Windows 98 which I replaced with Win2k. It worked but it was always a bit slower than I liked. I tweaked everything and it was still slow. But now I like using it despite the availability of dual core and quad core machines. I have three different Linux OS's available on a 20GB hard drive, Mepis 8, AntiX and Puppy Linux 4.20 which I am running now. If I had to gripe about something it would be that Linux takes a little more work getting the wireless up and running. Puppy Linux works great with my Linksys wireless card but the Mepis and AntiX won't connect with it but do great with a $10 Airlink card. If you are getting bored with Windows and want to challenge yourself hop over to Distrowatch and check out the latest to hit the net in Linux OS's. You might even find one or two you prefer over the standard Redmond fare.