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Why isn't Firefox 8.0 available as an update in the Update Manager?

Windows XP is over 10 years old now. And yet on the day that Firefox 8 came out, it installed and ran fine on the Microsoft OS. But Firefox 8 could not do the same on ubuntu. (There was a 2 week delay in release to Ubuntu).

Why did Mozilla's release version of Firefox 8 "just work" on Windows XP (a 10 years old OS) but wouldn't "just work" on Ubuntu, even on 11.10 (which was less than a month old)?

Why did Mozilla release Firefox 8 if it wasn't going to work on Ubuntu?

Community
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Sam
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2 Answers2

6

Firefox 8.0 works perfectly on my Ubuntu 11.10.

Now if you received it 2 weeks later than Windows XP that may be because even if firefox release it, canonical need to verify and allow package to be in repository then only you get update.

If you add firefox ppa to your repository then you can get updates as soon as they are released.

While for windows there is nothing to govern integrity of package you need to update it by yourself.

wisemonkey
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  • I have Firefox PPA on Ubuntu 10.04 install. Neither my 10.04 install nor my 11.10 install received Firefox 8 for 2 weeks. The forums indicated the delay was due to the Mozilla release of Firefox 8 basically not working on Ubuntu--crashes, freezes, etc. So why does such a thing occur on Ubuntu but not XP? And why did Mozilla still release 8 if it didn't work on Ubuntu? – Sam Nov 29 '11 at 20:25
  • ohh most of the time packages are slightly delayed just to check integrity and make few changes to other packages accordingly for compatibility. However in this particular case I can't talk for mozilla as I wouldn't know why they released it if it was buggy. – wisemonkey Nov 29 '11 at 20:36
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Mozilla released a Linux version of Firefox along with the Windows version, and that version worked with Ubuntu like with most other recent Linux distros.

But it took some time for the Ubuntu package to be available at the official Ubuntu software sources as the Ubuntu developers needed to port the Ubuntu specific changes to the new version, test everything and prepare the packages.

Florian Diesch
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  • Do you know what the "ubuntu specific changes" were? So the Mozilla linux release worked fine on other linux distros, but there were some "ubuntu specific things" that prevented it from working properly on ubuntu? – Sam Nov 29 '11 at 20:35
  • The Mozilla release works with Ubuntu, too. Ubuntu just added some thing, like better KDE integration, support for the Unity global menu and some bug fixes. Ubuntu also ships with some extensions, like ubufox, that need to work with the new Firefox relaese. – Florian Diesch Nov 29 '11 at 21:25