Running firefox without installing, is it ok ?

5 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/running-firefox-without-installing-is-it-ok.52418/

In Fedora Core 5 , firefox provided is version 1.5. So I removed it using rpm -e firefox.
Then downloaded the latest 2.0.0.2 version in tar.gz format. Extracted it to a folder. Now I can directly run it by double clicking the firefox script in the folder.

I see all the files related to firefox are in that extracted folder and in .mozilla folder of my home dir.

So I don't need to install it as the usual RPM way ??
Can someone explain why this tar.gz runs directly withour installing. This method seems easy to use a software, so why do we use .rpms ?

the firefox tarball needs no installing. You can use it straight away.

remember to create a symlink of executable to /usr/bin folder so that other apps can access firefox as well.

This way is not recommended because it make tracking of packages much difficult.

Thanks. I see this /usr/bin is where all the software links are. Humm...slowly this tux bug is bitting me.

I will have to search the command to make a symbolic link.

Btw there are all the tared softwares behave the same way ?? None requires installation ?

Nope. Usually tarballs will be source files, not precompiled binaries.

for firefox you follow this

first untar the file.

tar -xvzf firefox-2.*.tar.gz

cd into the directory

cd firefox

make a symlink

ln -s firefox /usr/bin/

There should be surely be a repository available for Firefox2 for FC5 too.