Installing Firefox 12.0 under RHEL, Scientific Linux, and CentOS 6.x
Tuesday, 24 April 2012If you're actually trying to install another version of Firefox, then click on the Firefox
tag, as there may be an entry on that other version.
The installation method that worked for Firefox 11.0 under Scientific Linux 6.1 works, mutatis mutandis, for Firefox 12.0 under Scientific Linux 6.1, and therefore ought to work for Firefox 12.0.x under RHEL 6.x and under CentOS 6.x.
So here are the steps that I recommend:
- Download the archive, firefox-12.0[.n].tar.bz2.
- The tarball contains a directory,
firefox
, which should be dropped-in as a sub-directory of something. If you want to ponder where, then study the FHS. As for me, as root, I put it in/opt
:tar -xjvf firefox-12.0[.n].tar.bz2 -C /opt/
(Omit that
[.n]
if it isn’t in the name of the archive that you downloaded. Replace it with the actual number from the name of the archive if such a number was included.) - You’ll need a
.desktop
file for Firefox (though you may already have one). As root, edit/create/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
, ensuring that it reads[Desktop Entry] Categories=Application;Network;X-Red-Hat-Base; Type=Application Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Firefox Comment='WWW browser' Exec='/opt/firefox/firefox' Icon='/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png' Terminal=false
(If you didn't install in
/opt
, or changed the name of thefirefox
directory, then you'll need to change the above accordingly.) - Restart the GUI, by logging out and back in or by restarting the system.