Skip to content

How to Install Firefox 4 in Fedora, RHEL and CentOS

Mozilla Firefox 4 has finally been released after such a long development cycle, when compared to the development of the recent releases of Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

For those who have been waiting all this time. It can be painful waiting for the new version of Firefox to show up on the default repositories.

Here is a way to install the new Firefox 4 without having to wait,[ad#300x250insideposts]

  1. Backup Firefox Settings
  2. Take a backup of your current Firefox user profile and settings. Even though it’s generally safe to skip this step, as the settings will stay on the computer even if your uninstall Firefox. It’s always better to be safe then sorry.

    tar cvzf firefox-backup.tar.gz ~/.mozilla

  3. Install Third-Party Spot Repository
  4. Install the Spot Repository. Third party repositories generally are updated faster then the default repositories. So sometimes third party repositories are needed if you wanted the latest software as soon as they are released.

    su -c 'wget http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/firefox4/fedora-firefox4.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-firefox4.repo'


    Note for CentOS 6 users.

    You will need to complete these extra steps before continuing.

    Open /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-firefox4.repo

    vi /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-firefox4.repo

    Edit and change the following line,

    From
    baseurl=http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/firefox4/fedora-$releasever/$basearch/

    To
    baseurl=http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/firefox4/fedora-14/$basearch/

  5. Remove Current Firefox Installation (Optional)
  6. Remove your current Firefox installation. If you plan on having more then one Firefox installation then you can skip this step.

    su -c 'yum remove firefox'

  7. Enable the Repository
  8. The repository will need to be enabled before we can use it.

    su -c 'yum –enablerepo fedora-firefox4'
    

  9. Install New Firefox 4
  10. Install the new Firefox 4 package onto your system and enjoy!!

    su -c 'yum install firefox4'
    

    Screenshot-Firefox web browser - Mozilla Firefox 4

10 thoughts on “How to Install Firefox 4 in Fedora, RHEL and CentOS”

  1. i tried to install firefox 4 in rhel5. I’ve downloaded the firefox-4.tar.bz2 file mozilla official site but when run the firefox , it returns the error like this” /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9′ not found (required by /home/guna/Installs/firefox/libxul.so) Can u help to get around it?

    1. Looks like you are using an old version of glibc. There’s not really a workaround in the sense of not having to update glibc.

      Run the following command to find out what version you are using.

      rpm -qa | grep glibc

      Depending on your version you will most probably have to update.

      up2date glibc

  2. Please update your post to make it works with CentOS 6:

    For CentOS 6 users.

    Open /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-firefox4.repo with any editor and change the following.

    From
    baseurl=http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/firefox4/fedora-$releasever/$basearch/

    To
    baseurl=http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/firefox4/fedora-14/$basearch/

    Otherwise your yum will try to search for fedora-6 packages.

    1. It should work, though I am yet to check. I would check the default repositories to see if firefox 4 has been included. If not then I would test this procedure in a development environment first.

      Sorry for the late reply also. Been very busy of late.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.