Install Firefox 8 on an Older Ubuntu Linux PC

Firefox 8 has hit the streets, and if you can not wait to get it up and running on your older version of Ubuntu, then you can run these commands at a prompt to get Firefox installed and running on your Ubuntu PC.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install Firefox language-pack-en language-pack-en-base

There are a number of enhancements that have been added to Firefox 8. Twitter had been added to the search bar and there is more support of locals.  Firefox should also be even faster and more responsive.

Default Search for Ubuntu Will Set to Yahoo

According to a report out of The Register, the next version of Ubuntu, Lucid Lynx, will have the default search setting for the Firefox Browser, set to Yahoo Search.

Is this a big deal? Not really. It is easy enough to change the search settings on Firefox. Just click on the tab just to the left of the search bar and select which engine you wish to use. It is the little search engine icon. Then the default is set. Even if you quit and restart your browser.

The funny thing is that Yahoo is actually paying Cannonical to have their engine set as a default. Since Microsoft is now in partnership with Yahoo, in a sort of weird way, Microsoft is paying a share to build and distribute Ubuntu. Still, not quite as overt as the Novell deal, but the link is there.

Will there be a backlash against Ubuntu in the Linux world? Who knows. Let the griping begin!

I have been using Chrome a lot anyways. It seems to work quite well.

Chrome Used more than Safari

In the browser wars, Google Chrome has established itself by skipping ahead of Apple's Safari browser in terms of usage. In comparing the two, Chrome seems to offer very similar features. What makes Chrome stand out is speed. Safari is nearly as slow as Firefox and Explorer on my rarely used Windows PC. But as in my Ubuntu PCs, Chrome is very fast, especially on start-up. I doubt there will ever be a Linux version of Safari, but it would be nice to do a comparison.

There seems to be ways of getting Safari with Wine on Linux, but that would not quite be the same. In either case, I'll stick with Chrome for now. The beta version has been running very well. It will be interesting to see if Chrome catches up with Firefox. My guess is that it probably will!

Firefox, Thunderbird 3 and Ubuntu

I had a chance to play around with Thunderbird 3 over the weekend on a Windows box. The developers at Mozilla have made quite a few changes over the previous version. Overall, I like the new interface.

One of the most noticeable advances was the inclusion of 'tabbed' browsing for your e-mail client. The popular tabbed style was grabbed straight out of the Firefox play book, and works quite well with Thunderbird. Tabbed browsing allows you to open multiple folders in your email client, and you can view your e-mails in an almost web browser like fashion.

To me it begs the question: Will Thunderbird and Firefox meld into one application? Why not integrate the two so that they are one in the same application? If Google can base and entire operating system on a web browser as they are with Chrome OS, then it will really be a small stretch for Mozilla to combine FireFox and Thunderbird.

My guess is that there is a good chance that Thunderbird 3 will make its debut in Ubuntu 10.04 (LTS) Lucid Lynx.