Upgrade to Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu 9.04 using Ubuntuzilla

One of the things I’ve found more than frustrating when I’m banging around Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), which is more and more these days, is the fact that I simply cannot upgrade Firefox 3.0.* to 3.5. Oh, I can enable this or enable that and get the the latest daily build of 3.5.* (code name “Shiretoko”) or (shudder) the old Firefox 3.5 beta 4 that’s installed side by side with Jaunty’s default Firefox 3.0.* and shares the same profile but that’s not what I’m looking for. I want to upgrade Jaunty’s default Firefox 3.0.* to 3.5 not install another version along side of it and have it automatically set as default.

When I was booted into Windows I easily and quickly updated Firefox 3.0.* to 3.5 just by clicking on “Help/Check for updates” and Firefox’s update manager offered me the option of upgrading to the next major version. But this isn’t an option when using Firefox in Ubuntu. I have to wait until the next version of Ubuntu is released in October of this year before I can actually get the official “branded” version of Firefox 3.5 and by that time the 3.5 series will probably be up to 3.5.2 or better.

But now there’s a way to get the latest version of Mozilla’s browser without the wait and it’s called Ubuntuzilla. Using this small but powerful python script will upgrade Firefox, Seamonkey or Thunderbird to the latest Official versions. But for those of you just wanting to update Firefox 3.0.* to 3.5, read on.

The folks at SourceForge have posted the specific procedure for using Ubuntuzilla for installing the script and upgrading Firefox (also Thunderbird and Seamonkey as well) to the latest release. The procedure also installs the 2 required dependencies which consists of an automatic update checker coupled with a simple Desktop notification system to notify you of any future updates. This keeps you from having to start Firefox as root in order to enable the built in standard update checker under Firefox’s “Help/Check for updates”. I used the above procedure and it worked like a charm.

This is one of the very few real beefs I have with Ubuntu. Locking users into a single version of Firefox which allows for security updates only with no option for upgrading the browser to the next major version once it’s released. Firefox is Ubuntu’s default browser of choice and upgrading to the next major version should be as easy as it is for Windows and Mac users. Until this happens though we can thank the Ubuntuzilla team and the folks at Ubuntu Manual for giving us an easy solution.

PS: Just so you know, Ubuntuzilla also has a neat uninstall script which returns your system back to it’s original condition Firefox-wise which would probably have to be done for those who wish to upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 when the time comes rather than doing a clean install.

Update 07/17/09: Seeing that Firefox 3.5.1 was released today I had to actually start Firefox as root in order to download the update with the browser’s built in “Check for updates” feature which is also a function that Ubuntuzilla is supposed to give you. If Ubuntuzilla was supposed to notify me that this new update to Firefox was available, well…it didn’t. Still, being able to easily and quickly update the browser is a bonus so no real complaints.

Tags: Firefox 3, Ubuntu 9.04, upgrading Firefox