Mozilla Firefox (One of the most popular open source web browser) has just (yesterday!) released its next stable version – Firefox 5 with some new features and improvements. The version 5.0 is available for Linux, Mac , Windows and Android operating system. Now, Firefox has very high release frequency, probably due to the fact that – they want to deliver all the innovative features quickly to the users, new version has arrived with a of performance tweaks and enhancements.
If you are using Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), you got version 4.0 installed by default; now it’s time to either update it or install a fresh version of Firefox 5, on the other hand if you are using older version of Ubuntu (The most appropriate reason would be the ‘critical bugs of Ubuntu 11.04’) such as Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) or Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) then also the procedure would be same.
The major feature which is included in this release is “Do Not Track on Multiple platform feature” which provides more control to users about how their data or behavior is used or tacked on the web.
Upgrading Firefox to Latest version in Ubuntu
If you have installed Firefox from PPA or Synaptic Package Manager, then it will be updated along with the system update. Move to System -> Administration -> Update Manager and click on Check to update the cache (About the current Packages). If you are using the Firefox version installed by default (it’s most likely the case if you are using Ubuntu 11.04, but within few days it must be available under official repository of Ubuntu 11.04) then the latest version may not show up in the update manager, then first add this PPA (Personal Package Archive) address to Synaptic Package Manager ->Settings -> Repositories.
ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa
Now, search for Firefox 5 for in Synaptic Package Manager, right click and select Upgrade option. it will hardly take a couple of minutes.
Alternative way of installing Firefox on Ubuntu
Run the following commands ( then update your browser using Update Manage Manager if you don’t want to update other packages, in this case execute only first 2 commands at terminal).
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Download Firefox 5 for Ubuntu
Download the Firefox tar.bz2 file from its official website, and execute -run-mozilla.sh file, after extraction (tar -xf mozilla-5.tar.bz2).