Automatic Firefox Update in Linux

Izhar Firdaus Follow Support Dec 22, 2006 · 1 min read

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

I guess everyone noticed that Firefox in Linux does not auto update using its update engine, and you'll need to use yum, apt, emerge, etc to update it. This is due to the reason that firefox from distribution packages is made to be installed into as read-only to the users. You can *fix* this problem by installing firefox into your home folder. By doing this, it allows firefox to be overwritten and make the update work. It worked for my Firefox2 on FC6.

You can read my guide in installing apps in your home folder here

as for me , I install firefox in ~/local/opt/firefox2 and a symlink to the firefox startup script in ~/local/bin

Btw, if you are using a compositing manager (eg. compiz/beryl ), you might need to add these two lines into the firefox startup script - right after the GPL notice - to keep firefox from crashing when opening sites with Adobe Flash

XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS

G'luck and enjoy~ :)

Written by Izhar Firdaus Follow Support

I'm a system architect, data engineer and developer advocate with passion in Free / Open Source software, entrepreneurship, community building, education and martial art. I take enjoyment in bridging and bringing together different FOSS technologies to help businesses and organizations utilize IT infrastructure to aid and optimize their business and organizational process.