Moving from Windows to Linux

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This article is written for users who are moving from Windows to Linux and want to continue to use Firefox and/or Thunderbird. It can be used with any Linux distribution or window manager, but is somewhat Ubuntu-centric due to its popularity.

Most Linux distributions have a package manager that supports Thunderbird and Firefox. If you're using Ubuntu for example, you can use Synaptic to install it if it's not already installed. There is no need to use Automatrix or apt-get.

Moving your profile data

  • Install Firefox and Thunderbird in Linux.
  • Find your existing Firefox profile and Thunderbird profile.
  • Copy the the contents of the Firefox profile over the profile in the ".mozilla/firefox" subdirectory in your home directory. Copy the contents of the Thunderbird profile over the profile in the ".thunderbird" subdirectory in your home directory. They are hidden subdirectories, you need to find a option in your file browser to display them. In both Gnome and KDE you can use "Show -> hidden files" to show directories that begin with a period. If you're dual booting many distributions provide read-only access to your NTFS partition in the file manager, you don't have to copy the profile to some type of removable media.
  • Your package manager typically adds a menu command to run Firefox and Thunderbird when it installs them. For Ubuntu, its at Applications -> Internet.

If the application doesn't start type slocate run-mozilla.sh in a terminal. It should return the directories that have that file, which also contain either the 'firefox" or "thunderbird" shell scripts used to start the application. Type echo $PATH into a terminal and verify the directory is on the path.

If it starts but doesn't work correctly try running in safe mode to temporarily disable any added extensions. While they normally also work under Linux you occasionally run into Gnome or KDE integration problems, or it might not be using a relative pathname to store its data. Exiting the application and deleting the extensions.rdf file in the profile also solves many problems (it will be recreated when you run the application).

You could have also used one of the other methods described in moving your profile to tell Firefox and Thunderbird where to look for the profile. For example, you might want to create a "profiles" directory that contains both your Firefox and Thunderbird profiles.

Other considerations

The Help -> Check for Updates menu is enabled in the build on the Mozilla web site, but it's frequently disabled (though you can still check for updates for add-ons) if you installed it using a package manager with a graphical front end such as Synaptic or Adept. This isn't a problem since typically the package manager will check for updates once a day, and ask if if you want to upgrade if it finds one.

Ubuntu installs a Alltray program to "dock any application with no native tray icon (like Evolution, Thunderbird, Terminals) into the system tray". If you don't get a new mail icon in the system tray try either installing it or the Mozilla New Mail Icon (Biff) extension.

The menus are different under Linux. Tools -> Options and Tools -> Account Settings are replaced by Edit -> Preferences and Edit -> Account Settings. Additional command line arguments are supported under Linux.

Not all of the fonts that you're used to are available. You may want to install the Microsoft TrueType Fonts. With Ubuntu (or any Debian based distribution) you can use either the package manager or Automatrix to install the msttcorefonts package . For other distributions (Fedora, openSUSE etc.) you could install the rpm's from this web site if you can't find a more convenient solution.

Installation alternatives

You can get a copy of Firefox and Thunderbird from many sources. Typically (especially if they're part of a Linux distribution) they will all identify themselves as Mozilla builds in the help menu, but they're not identical. They may be a trunk build for the next release, and identify themselves as that version even though Mozilla hasn't released it yet. Or the location its installed in may be modified.

Swiftfox is a optimized build of Firefox. It installs it in the /opt directory. The Community Builds/Binaries forums has other 3rd party builds.

Automatrix will install Thunderbird and Firefox using apt-get calls to the Ubuntu repositories, but doesn't provide any update mechanism. Since its essentially duplicating what you can do with Synaptic, but Synaptic doesn't know the package is installed you're better off using the package manager.

Ubuntuzilla

Ubuntuzilla is a python script that can install Firefox, Thunderbird and/or SeaMonkey under Ubuntu. It provides an option for it to check for updates and notify you. However, the popup is only displayed for a few seconds so you may need to use a checkforupdatetext command if you're unsure whether a update is available.

Synaptic installs Firefox/Thunderbird in /usr/share. Ubuntuzilla installs the programs in /opt and changes the links to run its version by default. It stores the Thunderbird profile in ~/.thunderbird rather than ~/.mozilla-thunderbird. You could change the launcher to use the "mozilla-thunderbird" command instead of "thunderbird" if you want to use the one from the Ubuntu repository. While its popular, its not recommended since it has a history of causing problems with the Ubuntu version, and there is little advantage to having two copies most of the time. If you try to uninstall the equivalent Ubuntu package it will have nasty side effects since that will uninstall the ubuntu-desktop.

Mozilla web site

The instructions are written for Firefox but also apply to Thunderbird.

  • Download the latest release to your home directory with your browser. If it was Firefox version 2.0.0.6 the file would be firefox-2.0.0.6-tar.gz.
  • Extract the contents with an archiving utility such as Ark or tar. If you're using Ubuntu you can right clink on the file in the file browser, and select "Open with Archive Manager".
bash$ tar zxf firefox-<version>.tar.gz
  • You can use the files where they are, or move them to a publicly accessible location such as /usr/local or /opt. If your distribution installed its own copy of Firefox its recommended you keep this copy in the home directory to avoid potential problems.
bash$ su
<password>
bash# mv firefox /usr/local
bash# chown -R root:root /usr/local/firefox
  • Create a link to launch Firefox. If you're using Gnome, use System- > Preferences -> Main Menu -> New Item and then browse to the "firefox." shell script in the directory. Or right click on the panel (taskbar), select Add to Panel, Custom application launcher, and then browse to the "firefox." shell script.

Cultural differences

Many distributions try to make somebody migrating from Windows more comfortable by hiding many of the differences. A few that you might run into when troubleshooting Firefox or Thunderbird are:

  • Any files or folders beginning with a period are hidden. Case matters. Filename. (with a dot at the end) is not the same as Filename (with no dot at the end). Thunderbird won't display hidden folders in the Attach File(s) window unless display hidden folders is enabled in the file manager.
  • It can be tough finding where stuff is installed since there is no top down hierarchy in the file browser like there is in Windows Explorer, and it installs the software in more directories (not just the equivalent of "\Program Files" and "\Windows"). One advantage of installing something using a package manager front-end such as Synaptic, Adept, Yum, Yast, rpmdrake, up2date etc. rather than typing apt-get or rpm commands in a terminal is typically you can select the package and look in properties to find where it installed the files.
  • Executables don't have standard file extensions. You frequently can't run an executable directly. When you launch (or type in a terminal) "thunderbird" its actually running a "thunderbird" shell script which calls the "run-mozilla.sh" shell script to run "thunderbird-bin". However, if you double clicked on "thunderbird-bin" (the actual executable) it does nothing.
  • The Microsoft power toys have a "open command window here" extension for Windows Explorer. The equivalent in Ubuntu for the file manager would be the nautilus-open-terminal package.
  • There is no cls command in a terminal - use either control-L or "clear" (no double quotes).
  • ~/ is your home directory. i.e. /home/eric/downloads and ~/downloads are the same directory
  • Typically there is no need to install an anti-virus scanner unless you're sharing files with a Windows user. If you feel you need one ClamAV is most frequently recommended though most major anti-virus companies have one for Linux. This article compares the anti-virus scanners for Linux. Most free anti-virus scanners won't intercept your browsers downloads or your mail traffic - they seem focused on users manually launching them to check a file, or scanning most of the hard disk.

Useful resources

Most distributions also have their own forums.

See also