Iceweasel To Firefox, Icedove To Thunderbird

By now, most people know that Mozilla recently released Firefox 3.5, the latest version of their free and open source web browser. The new Firefox has many new features, and is reportedly noticeably faster than even the 3.0.x version that I have been using, as well as many times faster than earlier versions of that browser.

For the record, I’ve been very happily using Firefox instead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer since November 10, 2004. In July of 2006, when I switched from using Windows full-time to using Linux full-time, I continued to use Firefox in Linux. I’ve been using the “Squeeze” (Testing) branch of Debian for the past few months.

Actually, to be technically correct, I haven’t been using Firefox since I switched to Debian Linux in December of 2007 — Or I’ve been using Firefox all along, depending on how you define “Firefox.”

You see, many Linux distros include Firefox (and its sibling email client, Thunderbird) in their default installations. But due to licensing issues that have been debated ad nauseum for the past few years, the Mozilla folks don’t allow the Debian folks to call their Debian-tweaked version of the Firefox browser, “Firefox.” So the Debian folks call their browser “Iceweasel” instead. But, under the hood, it’s really just Firefox. In fact, in Debian’s Synaptic package manager, Iceweasel’s description says, “This browser is based on the Firefox source-code, with minor modifications.”

Similarly, and for the same reasons, Debian has its own version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client, called “Icedove.”

So, like I said, depending on your point of view, I’ve either been using Firefox for more than 4 1/2 years — or I stopped using Firefox about 1 1/2 years ago when I switched to Debian Linux.

Do I really care whether I use Firefox or Iceweasel as my browser? No, not really.

Do I really care whether I use Thunderbird or Icedove as my email client? No, not really.

But every time Mozilla releases a new version of Firefox or Thunderbird, it takes a certain amount of time for the Debian people to release their corresponding new version of Iceweasel or Icedove.

Until now, that time lag hasn’t been an issue for me.

But Mozilla’s recent release of Firefox 3.5 changed my mind.

Why? Because it’s been two weeks since Firefox 3.5 was released, and I still haven’t seen any sign or heard any word of when Debian will release its version of it — Iceweasel 3.5. In fact, my Debian Squeeze (Testing) PC was running the newest version of Iceweasel, which was still the old version 3.0.9.

A few days ago, I wrote to a friend, wondering if Mozilla would end up releasing any bug fixes for Firefox 3.5 before Debian would even release Iceweasel 3.5.

My question was answered yesterday, when Mozilla released Firefox 3.5.1, to patch a newly discovered security issue.

So I finally did something that I’ve never done before. I downloaded Firefox 3.5.1 from the Mozilla web site and manually installed it on my Debian Squeeze PC.

You can find detailed instructions all over the web, but the gist of the process is that I downloaded the Linux version of Firefox 3.5.1; uncompressed it into my /home/computerbob/ folder; and then created a desktop symlink to the “firefox” script in that new “firefox” folder. Double-clicking that symlink opened Firefox 3.5, and it immediately found and began using my existing Iceweasel 3.0.9 profile — which I keep on a separate, shared data partition — including all of my Iceweasel settings, bookmarks and add-ons.

That’s when I learned that two of my browser addons (HTML Validator and Tab Mix Plus) were not compatible with Firefox 3.5. In fact, the Mozilla add-ons site told me that there’s no version of either of those add-ons that’s compatible with FF3.5. So I went to the HTML Validator and Tab Mix Plus web sites, where I easily found and installed new versions of them that were designed for FF3.5.

Firefox 3.5.1 is noticeably faster than Iceweasel 3.0.9 on my Athlon XP 2100+ PC with 1 GB of RAM, running Debian Squeeze (but still running KDE 3.5.x instead of KDE4). Web pages snap onto the screen without any noticeable lag. It’s a real joy to use. I immediately lost all motivation to return to using Iceweasel 3.0.9.

So, after trying Firefox 3.5 for a few hours, I uninstalled Iceweasel 3.0.9 from my system. I didn’t want to accidently delete my Iceweasel/Firefox profile, so I did a regular uninstall instead of a “complete removal” uninstall. According to Synaptic, the only thing that was uninstalled was Iceweasel itself.

Afterward, I spent several hours working in Firefox 3.5 without any problems or issues.

I felt so empowered by the whole experience that I took a look at my Icedove (Thunderbird) email client. I discovered that the latest Debian Icedove for Debian Squeeze (Testing), was Icedove 2.0.0.19, while the latest Thunderbird was version 2.0.0.22.

So I downloaded and installed Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 to my /home/computerbob/ folder, the same way I had downloaded and installed Firefox.

But when I started Thunderbird for the first time, it didn’t find and use my existing Icedove profile, it started creating a brand new, blank profile, so I cancelled that operation and did a little research.

I quickly discovered that unlike Firefox and Iceweasel, which both store their profiles.ini file in ~/.mozilla/firefox,

Icedove and Thunderbird store their profiles.ini files in different places:

Icedove stores profiles.ini in
~/.mozilla-thunderbird

while Thunderbird stores profiles.ini in
~/.thunderbird

Thunderbird had started to create a brand new profile because it had looked for an existing profile in a different place than Icedove had stored it.

So I shut down Thunderbird, made a copy of Icedove’s ~/.mozilla-thunderbird folder, renamed it to ~/.thunderbird, and answered “yes” to overwrite the existing ~/.thunderbird folder that Thunderbird had created when I started it the first time.

After that, Thunderbird found and used the copy of my Icedove profile with its settings, email accounts, stored email messages, and add-ons.

A few hours later, I uninstalled Icedove 2.0.0.19 from my system.

So now I’m happily using the latest, most secure versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, instead of older versions of Iceweasel and Icedove.

I’m not positive, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that another advantage to using Firefox and Thunderbird (manually installed) instead of using Iceweasel and Icedove (installed through a Debian package manager like Synaptic), is that, unlike Iceweasel and Icedove, Firefox and Thunderbird’s built-in, automatic update feature will work, thus keeping both my browser and my email client updated to any new versions that Mozilla releases from now on.

UPDATE, August 5, 2009: I just confirmed that Firefox’s automatic updating feature works now. A few minutes ago, while I was browsing the web, a Firefox dialog box popped up, telling me that Firefox 3.5.2 is now available, and offering to download and install it for me. I clicked on the box to approve the update, and a minute later, I was using Firefox 3.5.2.

Related Posts:
ComputerBob Tweaks Firefox (Iceweasel) 3 Tabs
How I Made Firefox Run Incredibly Faster
Firefox 3.5 Features
Good News For Firefox Users
Linux Tech Talk 5
I’m Using Debian Squeeze Now
Stop Using Internet Explorer
How To End A NoScript Annoyance
Nasty New IE Bug
Squeeze Gets Its Name

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 9:35 am.