Install Mozilla Firefox 1.5 on Ubuntu 5.10

From Julian Yap

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is significantly faster than the default Ubuntu 5.10's version 1.0.7 one.

Pre-installation notes

You will no longer get automatic updates through the repositories (but Firefox itself has a built into auto-updater).
The Totem video plugin doesn't seem to work with Firefox 1.5. You may want to install package 'mozilla-mplayer' instead before you start.
You need package 'libstdc++5' installed.

Installation

First, back up your bookmarks and settings:

cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default
mkdir ~/Desktop/ffsettings
cp bookmarks.html cert8.db cookies.txt formhistory.dat key3.db signons.txt history.dat  mimeTypes.rdf ~/Desktop/ffsettings

Download firefox-1.5.tar.gz from mozilla.org, and change to the directory you downloaded it to.
Install it to /opt/firefox:

sudo cp firefox-1.5.tar.gz /opt/
cd /opt
sudo tar xzvf firefox-1.5.tar.gz
sudo rm firefox-1.5.tar.gz

Link to your plugins (and remove totem-mozilla as it doesn't seem to work with Firefox 1.5):

cd /opt/firefox/plugins/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/* .
sudo rm libtotem_mozilla.*

Rename your old profile:

cd
mv .mozilla .mozilla.ubuntu

To ensure it is used as the default version, modify the symbolic link in /usr/bin:

sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/firefox
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

Try it out: :-)

firefox

Restore your old data:

cd ~/Desktop/ffsettings
mv* ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default

This step must only be done after running firefox at least once and fully closing it.

To ensure that other programs use version 1.5 of firefox and not the old 1.07 version, go to Preferences -> Preferred Applications in the System menu. For the "Web Browser" tab, choose "Custom" and then enter the command: