Debian packages the firefox-esr release which works quite well most of the time, but I find often the newest browser is often required for some functionality. I've put together a little script that basically sets this up with a local firefox install in ~/.opt
You can copy/paste this into a terminal and it will download the latest firefox, extract it to ~/.opt/firefox and setup a desktop file so that it will appear in the desktop menu
mkdir -p ~/.opt
cd ~/.opt
FFCHANNEL=latest
LIBDIRSUFFIX="64"
VER=${VER:-$(wget --spider -S --max-redirect 0 "https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-${FFCHANNEL}&os=linux${LIBDIRSUFFIX}&lang=${FFLANG}" 2>&1 | sed -n '/Location: /{s|.*/firefox-\(.*\)\.tar.*|\1|p;q;}')}
echo $VER
wget https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/${VER}/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-${VER}.tar.bz2 -P /tmp
tar jxvf /tmp/firefox-${VER}.tar.bz2
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
BASEDIR=`pwd`
cat <<EOF >> ~/.local/share/applications/firefox-stable.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Firefox
Comment=Web Browser
Exec=${BASEDIR}/firefox/firefox %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=${BASEDIR}/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
StartupWMClass=Firefox
StartupNotify=true
EOF
sudo ln -sf ${BASEDIR}/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox
More information in the debian wiki: https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox
posted at: 19:34 | path: /debian | permanent link to this entry
I ran into an issue recently trying to install a application menu link on a debian system (desktop was mate in this case, but I think it applies to any gnome based desktop). The issue was that I would install a new .directory file for a new menu entry along with the .desktop file, and when I did, the application would show up under "Other" and not under the menu category I was trying to add.
The processes being:
- create your menu entry in a file named company-company.directory
- create your application entry in a file name company-appname.desktop
- install with the command xdg-desktop-menu install company-company.directory company-appname.desktop
Running this as the local user, correctly installs the files in ~/.local/share/, but it does not write a menu file. And so the application will show up under Applications->Other
If you run the command as root, it will install system wide, and creates the menu for you under /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/company-company.menu
But if you don't want this installed system wide, it seems like the only way to fix this is to setup the .menu file manually? I feel like I'm doing this wrong, and there is a way to specify the menu in a user folder, but at the time I can't seem to figure this out.
To fix the issue I created the /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/company-company.menu file manually like this:
<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/menu-1.0.dtd">
<Menu>
<Name>Applications</Name>
<Menu>
<Name>company-company</Name>
<Directory>company-company.directory</Directory>
<Include>
<Category>Company</Category>
</Include>
</Menu>
</Menu>
This added the menu entry, and the locally installed applications now show up in the correct location.
posted at: 23:43 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry