Update on FireFox 10 problem

[siliconshaman]

Ok, quick recap, Firefox 10 has proven to be unstable [very!] in Ubuntu 11.10 and below, basically, it's unusable.

The solution is to use the package manger to completely remove FF... after backing up your passwords, permissions, bookmarks and extensions! [use something like FEBE, or xmarks .. FF is just about stable enough if you don't ask it to load any webpages.]

Once you've done that, follow the instructions here and install IceCat, which is the Ubuntu specific, open-source fork of FireFox. [the quick method works, I've tested it myself]

After that, Icecat will look and behave like the unbroken version of FF, you can restore your bookmarks etc. So far it'll accept the latest versions of addons for FF with no problems, but obviously I haven't tested them all.

Job done. Out with borked FF, in with Icecat.

Comments

[jewelfox]

It seems to work okay in Fedora, but the new web inspector feature doesn't. :\ I don't know what went wrong with Firefox 10. Did Linux testing stop being a priority?

[bookherd]

Thanks for the update and for sharing your solution. I'm not seeing a ton of complaints about this problem elsewhere, which leads me to believe it's not an issue for most Ubuntu users. (I'm currently unable to test it out for myself.)

For others who may be dealing with this issue, here's a thread on ubuntuforums.org that recommends creating a new profile: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1905862
And a couple of other possible fixes in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1921293