Intergrate FF 3.5 into Ubuntu/Debian distros

Firefox 3.5 was released on june 30th but the is no sign of a .deb file for ubuntu/debian distros. All we can get from the daily ppa is a 3.5 prelease version ( updated until  3/07/09) . and in that facebook , yahoomail say its an old browser  and banking sites fail to determine the browser and refuse the users a login.

The commandline method below is a far better , easier and quicker method to install the latest version of firefox 3.5. This version is properly detected by the bank websites, facebook and yahoomail.

Please note: This tutorial will override the existing ff3.1 but will use the same profile and addons. Also some add-ons  esp google gears and some themes does not work with ff3.5 yet (updated 3/7/09)

Open up Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and run the following commands:

1. cd /tmp
2. wget "http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-US"
   Note: Your download link may be different depending on your country and language. I got the link by clicking the download link, canceling  the automatic download, right-clicking the “Your download should automatically begin in a few seconds, but if not, click here” link, and selecting Copy Link Location.
3. tar xvf firefox-*.bz2
4. sudo cp -r firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.5
5. sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.old
6. sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-3.5
7. sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 /usr/bin/firefox

Close Firefox and then reopen. You should now be running Firefox 3.5.

Thanks to Chris Jean for the tutorial