How-To: Install Firefox 3.6 in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic

Firefox 3.6 was released yesterday, after over six months since the last major release, version 3.5. Firefox 3.6 ships with versions for over 70 languages, support for Personas, an add-on allowing you to change the appearance of the tab bar and choose from thousands of themes, improvements to the open video support (like the fullscreen mode), improved JavaScript performance and start-up time, support for the new DOM and HTML5 specs.

This is a short tutorial which will show how to install Firefox 3.6 in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala from the Mozilla Daily PPA.

First, open the terminal and add the necessary repository addresses to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Or, for a GUI editor:

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following two lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Notice that the second line is only needed if you plan to fetch the source code for Firefox. Make sure to save the file and proceed to the next step.

Now, add the trusted key for this repository:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE

Update your packages list:

sudo apt-get update

Remove the current Firefox installation:

sudo apt-get remove --purge firefox

And now install version 3.6:

sudo apt-get install firefox

Now you may want to create a new profile for the new 3.6 version. To do this, run Firefox with the -P parameter:

firefox -P

To run two different instances of Firefox and different profiles you can use:

firefox --no-remote -P

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