Installing Firefox

Basic installation instructions can also be found in the Firefox release notes.

All Systems

Firefox system requirements are listed here. Download the latest version of the Firefox installer for your system from mozilla.com. If you install Firefox on a multi-user system where access privileges are restricted, you must run Firefox as a user with access to that location upon installation so that all initial startup files are generated.

Note: In most cases, you can install a newer version of Firefox over an existing 1.0 or later version [1]. If you prefer a clean install, Uninstall your current Firefox version and delete the installation directory before launching the Firefox installer.

Windows

Using any browser, download the Firefox setup file to your desktop or other location. After the download is complete, exit Firefox completely (if open) and close all other running programs. Double-click the downloaded setup file to launch the installer.

If you have problems with the Firefox installation, do the following:

• Re-download the Firefox setup file if you receive the message, 7-Zip Unspecified Error
• Open the Windows Temp folder (Windows 98/ME: Start -> Run -> Type C:\Windows\Temp -> OK. Windows 2000/XP: Start -> Run -> Type %temp% -> OK). Select all files and folders and delete, then close the Temp folder window.
• Make sure Firefox is not running and that no instance of "firefox.exe" appears in the Windows Task Manager
• Disable your antivirus program and try again.

Caution: Upgrading from an earlier Firefox version to Firefox 2 without ending all "firefox.exe" running processes may result in a faulty installation (bug 357922, bug 357890) which is usually resolved by uninstalling Firefox (or deleting the file "firefox.exe") and then reinstalling Firefox 2 (Fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.1).

Mac OS X

Note: Starting with Firefox 1.5, Mac OS X 10.2 or higher is required [2].

Download the Firefox .dmg (disk image) file and double click to open (mount) it. This creates a "mounted disk" image icon on the desktop and opens a disk-image folder window containing the Firefox application icon. Drag the Firefox application icon to a Hard Disk location such as the Applications folder, then close the disk-image folder window.

Important: Be sure to drag the Firefox application out of the disk image and onto your Hard Disk before running it. Do not double click the icon in the disk image! To start Firefox, double-click the Firefox icon in the Applications folder.

After doing all of the above, you can control-click the mounted disk image icon and choose "Eject" and drag the .dmg file to the trash (unless you want to keep the .dmg file as a backup) [3].

An illustration of these steps can be viewed here.

Linux

First, download the latest release to your home directory with your browser or download manager.

bash$ cd ~
bash$ wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/.../firefox-<version>.tar.gz

Next, extract the contents with an archiving utility such as Ark or tar.

bash$ tar zxf firefox-<version>.tar.gz

Now you must select the installation directory. If you are the only user, the extracted files could stay where they are, but If this is a multi-user system, the firefox directory must be moved to a publicly accessible location such as /usr/local or /opt.

bash$ su
<password>
bash# mv firefox /usr/local
bash# chown -R root:root /usr/local/firefox

The installation is more or less complete, but it's recommended that the firefox script be available somewhere in your path to avoid the inconvenience of having to enter the full path. This can be accomplished by creating a symbolic link in the relative 'bin' directory.

For the personal installation:

bash$ mkdir bin
bash$ cd bin
bash$ ln -s ../firefox/firefox .

Or the mult-user installation (as root):

bash# cd /usr/local/bin
bash# ln -s ../firefox/firefox .

Many Linux distributions already include /usr/local/bin and ~/bin in their global environment variable path, which can easily be verified by running 'firefox' from the shell or the desktop environment's (run) menu. If execution fails (command not found), you can adjust the path by appending "/usr/local/bin:$HOME/bin" to the existing PATH variable in /etc/profile and/or /etc/bashrc.