How to install Firefox from Mozilla.com (from source)

Has a new version of Firefox came out and you really wanted to use it but you had to wait for it to finally make its way into the Fedora repos?  So you decided to go to mozilla.com and download it from there but after you download it you have no idea what to do with it!
Well this is how to install it.

First go to the folder you downloaded Firefox to.
Right-click on the downloaded file and click "Extract Here".
Now in the extracted folder there will be a file called "firefox" double-click on it and Firefox will start!

But if your like me you wouldn't just want a folder called firefox laying around.
You also wouldn't want to have to go to that folder every time you wanted to start Firefox.
So this is howto fix that.

Open a terminal and cd to the directory that you extracted Firefox in.
If that was your Downloads folder then enter in the terminal:

cd Downloads

Now become root by entering:

su
and enter the root password

Now enter:

mv firefox /opt


Now the Firefox folder is out of the way.  But now you need to make a launcher.
To do that you right-click on your desktop and click "Create Launcher".

Now in the Name field type Firefox
and in the Command field type:
/opt/firefox/firefox
Now click OK

Now you have created your launcher.
You can drag it to the Gnome panel if you want.

What?!  You want a launcher in the menu too?  Fine.
To make a launcher in the Applications menu you have to be able to edit the gnome-menu.
In Fedora 12 they disabled being able to edit the gnome-menu by default so you will have to enable it by installing the menu editing package.  To do that enter this as root in a terminal:

yum install alacarte

After the package is installed go to System > Preferences > Main Menu.
Click on Internet in the left pane and then click "New Item".
Now in the Name field put Firefox x.  In the place of the "x" you can put whatever you want, just put something so you can tell the difference between the Firefox that came preinstalled with Fedora and the one you just installed.
And in the Command field put the same as before.
Now click OK and your done!


NOTE:  Technically the package you downloaded from mozilla.com is not "source" as someone has pointed out to me.  It's called pre-compiled binaries.  So if you wanted to install Firefox from "source" then you will have to find out how to do it from somewhere else because I have no idea how to do it and I hear that you would be better off gouging your eyes then trying to do it (that might be exaggerating just a little ;).  But if for whatever reason you really do want to build Firefox from source then here are the instructions on mozillas site: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/build_documentation

How to install RPM Fusion

RPM Fusion is a repository that has packages that Fedora does not ship in there own repository.

To install RPM Fusion enter this into a terminal:

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

Type in the root password and hit enter.  Now RPM Fusion will install.

Now your done,  RPM Fusion is installed

How to enable Restart X server shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace)

Back in Fedora 11 they disabled the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace shortcut that restarted the X server.  Some people liked this because they would always hit it by accident and that would restart the X server and it would mess things up if they were in the middle of something.  But some other people didn't like this because they used Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart X when there programs froze.

So if you are from the first group of people then your ok,
But if you are from the second then this is how to enable it.

First go to System > Preferences > Keyboard
Then click on the "Layouts" tab
Click on "Options"
And this window will appear:

Click on the drop down arrow of "Key sequence to kill the X server"
And check the checkbox "Control + Alt + Backspace"

And there you go now when you press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace it will restart the X server

How to setup sudo

To enable sudo for your user you need to edit the sudoers file and add your user to the the wheel group.

First lets edit the sudoers file.

Open a terminal and type visudo then hit enter.

Now scroll down until you get to the part of the file that looks like this:

root    ALL=(ALL)       ALL

now right under

root    ALL=(ALL)       ALL

you are going to put

your-user-name    ALL=(ALL)       ALL

After you do that the file should look like this:

root    ALL=(ALL)       ALL

your-user-name    ALL=(ALL)       ALL

If you dont want to have to type in your password when you use sudo remove the "#" from in front of:

# %wheel ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL

So it looks like this:

 %wheel ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL

Now to exit and save the sudoers file type :wq! and hit enter.

Now to add you user to the wheel group enter:

usermod -a -G wheel your-user-name

There you go sudo is now set up