Install Firefox to replace Iceweasel web browser

Applied To : Debian Lenny 5.0, Iceweasel 3.x, Firefox 3.x

This newly released Debian has included default Iceweasel web browser, which is an modification & re-branding of Firefox (due to license issue). It work much the same as Firefox, but it still has some issues especially display some websites are using Javascripts.

So, I decided to remove Iceweasel and install Firefox, after searching the web - I found many forums talking about Iceweasel are not easily be replaced with Firefox, unless with some command-line steps and it is rather not so straight forward.

Assuming that firefox-3.0.7.tar.bz2 (the current version as of this blog post), has been download, then you need to open Terminal window and logon as root, follow by the below commands:

aptitude remove iceweasel
mv firefox-3.0.7.tar.bz2 /usr/lib/
cd /usr/lib/
tar -jxvf firefox-3.0.7.tar.bz2
ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

Then you just need to create a launch icon (shorcut) on your GNOME desktop or menu, or you may create a file and save it in your desktop. The filename should be "Firefox.desktop" with the below file content:

[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false Name[en_US]=Firefox Exec=/usr/bin/firefox Icon=/usr/lib/firefox/icons/mozicon50.xpm StartupNotify=true

In order to make use of browser plugins that come together with Debian installation, you’ll may need to create a symlink from /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/ to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ using the below 2 commands:

rm -rf /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

Great! we are now having a Firefox to be run within Debian.