Ubuntu Tutorials : Dapper – Hardy – Intrepid – Jaunty

So I’ve decided that Konqueror is just not the web browser that some people want it to be. Call me spoiled / ruined for having spent so much time on Firefox, but I just can’t use it to be as productive as I want to be so I’ve installed Firefox on my Kubuntu installation. For those of you that are in similar situations keep reading and find out how to manually install Firefox within KDE.

Now, I am perfectly aware that I can download and install the Firefox package simply and easily using Adept or aptitude. I have one very key reason why I don’t want to do it this way. I don’t want the pile of gnome dependencies that come with it. If I’m going to run KDE I want to run a clean KDE, and adding GTK clutter is not on my agenda. So, manually installing Firefox is nearly as easy and makes for a much cleaner installation in my mind.

Installing Firefox Manually

Update: I found in some additional testing that using the following command *just* installed Firefox and none of the other packages so.. you take your pick: (I normally use aptitude to install which installed optional packages as well).

sudo apt-get install firefox

OR

1. Download the latest version of Firefox from the Mozilla web page. Save this file to disk.
2. sudo tar -C /opt/ -zxvf firefox-*.tar.gz
3. sudo aptitude install libstdc++5
4. sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox
5. sudo vim ~/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Put the following content into the newly created file:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Firefox Web Browser
Exec=firefox
GenericName=Web Browser
Icon=/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png
Name=Firefox
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=0
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=


Done. You should now be able to launch Firefox either from the command line (firefox) or from your KDE menu within the Internet section. When a new release of Firefox comes out you should simply be able to repeat steps #1 and #2 and you’re done. I will be running Firefox as my default browser on Kubuntu and using this method I don’t have to deal with the gnome dependencies cluttering things up!

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