updating firefox 5..?

[mazzy]

I'm new to LMDE - I've googled a bunch for this but whats the preferred way to update firefox in LMDE? I'm still running Firefox 5 for whatever reason, isn't the point of a rolling release to have more up to date packages with less work? I don't need bleeding edge but for things like Firefox which is probably the most important application for a large number of users I'd think that it would be updated when a new stable release comes out... I dont see the update on the latest or incoming repos, is there another repository I can add?

[gavinhc]

Firefox in LMDE is provided by the Mint team, so you won't find it in the Latest or Incoming repos since those are simply frozen mirrors of the Debian testing repo. Unfortunately, the Mint team hasn't been in the practice of updating their Firefox versions very quickly, understandable, there aren't many of them and there's a lot to do to maintain an OS. If you want to keep your browser more up-to-date, you can use Iceweasel, which is basically just Firefox without the Mozilla trademarked branding. This should be in the latest and incoming repos and appears to be updated fairly quickly after Mozilla puts out a new version of Firefox.

[Gerd50]

I'm running FF5 in LMDE and Iceweasel6 in Debian testing. I don't see any differences between the versions except a little bit
optics. 'Always must have the newest versions of whatever' for me is an illness set into the world by Microsoft. After leaving
windows behind me it took me some time in order to leave ill thoughts behind me

[gavinhc]

'Always must have the newest versions of whatever' for me is an illness set into the world by Microsoft.

I agree with you in principle that it is often unnecessary to be using the most recent version that exists for whatever software package. However, I think that for certain applications, like web browsers, it is important to be on the most recent version, since every release fixes bugs, most importantly security issues. Since I do many things online, such as banking, purchasing things with my credit card, etc., that I expect to be reasonably secure, I want to know that my browser is doing all it can to protect me. The best way to do that is to be on the most recent version of the browser.

In the past, Mozilla would backport some fixes to old versions and release point updates for them, but with their new release cycle, they have discontinued this practice. This means that as of today (Firefox 7 was released earlier) both of the versions of Firefox you are using have been officially "end of life"ed and will no longer receive any updates.

[Brian49]

Iceweasel 7 is now in the Debian Unstable repository.

[craigevil]

Iceweasel 7 is now in the Debian Unstable repository.

And people think Debian is old and updates slow.

$ apt-cache policy iceweasel
iceweasel:
Installed: 8.0~a2+20110923042012-1
Candidate: 8.0~a2+20110923042012-1
Version table:
*** 8.0~a2+20110923042012-1 0
500 http://mozilla.debian.net/ experimental/iceweasel-aurora i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
7.0-1 0 Same as the current Mozilla Firefox 7.0
500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main i386 Packages
7.0~b6-1 0
1 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental/main i386 Packages

[Gerd50]

gavinhc wrote:
In the past, Mozilla would backport some fixes to old versions and release point updates for them, but with their new release cycle, they have discontinued this practice. This means that as of today (Firefox 7 was released earlier) both of the versions of Firefox you are using have been officially "end of life"ed and will no longer receive any updates.

Well ok gavinhc, understood I red a lot about it in the german debian community now

http://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=131250

Some say it should be ok what we get in testing, others say better use what's coming up to unstable. All say, the new Mozilla
update policy is kind of weird.

What i did is removing FF5 and with that Iceweasel6 was installed. Bookmarks and Add-ons were taken over. After that i
added the unstable sources temporarely and updated to Iceweasel7.