Ok I didn't want to follow up under the how to but if you want to move it please do. I have a couple questions first.

Should I remove iceweasel of purge it or anything before following the "how to" about doing this? And I have to ask other than download the tar.bz is that fully complete?? *sorry had to ask as sometimes I miss things* also I lookedbriefly into my icedove and I didn't find the first thing you said to change but the second is "x-www-browser". I'd really like to just get this done.

Sorry for the noob type post but I just wanted to double check. You've never steered me wrong yet.

Thanks..
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I'd leave iceweasel because it pulls in the dependencies, just put it on hold so it doesn't overwrite the /usr/bin/firefox symbolic link every time you update.

If an about:config item is missing you have to add it, that's the same in firefox and thunderbird.

Ubuntu has solved at least part of this problem by creating a firefox dependencies package that only installs and keeps current the dependencies for the untouched native firefox file, and that's I think a far better way to handle this issue in general, that package would also handle creating the symbolic links etc.

My personal wish would be to to simply create a true firefox package, that actually keeps the tarball firefox up to date if desired, and keeps the symbolic links, system shortcuts, and dependencies up to date, but which literally does not touch at all the mozilla code. This would be almost trivially easy to achieve, I'm not sure why that hasn't been done by now to be honest by someone.

Oh, I forgot, iceweasel is also a dependency of sun java and I think gecko-media player as craigevil recently discovered.

So the firefox package should also tell the system via update alternatives that firefox is the real browser, and also let those apps know that firefox is an acceptable alternative to iceweasel.

Once such a package was created it would be trivial to maintain, since all you have to do is download the tarball each time.

Personally I'm not fighting debian problems any more, if something appears and has been a repeated problem, and if I detect denialism about the problem in debian, ie, excuses, blaming user's system, etc, then it's time to move on to a real solution.
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Okie dokie, thanks for the info, I will engage. Honestly every time I think I have iceweasel all going right something else tends to come up. Again, Thanks!!
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I kinda keep running into you, deach. I have taken the plunge, and moved from iceweasel to firefox today. I couldn't stomach the cpu load and constant cooling fan running, so far so good.
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humm where have we met I can't remember?? LOL....hey where do you change or add the FF icon I can't seem to find that. I only have a white rectangular thing where the launch icon should be? I think I have it going at this point in time. thanks...

OOPS guess it's not yet....I don't see Firefox in this list here.....what have I botched up??

and if someone sends me a link in kopete and I click on it this is what I get in the address bar Must have something not right here.....

OK what did I botch up now??

A little more info....I did use the /opt location in the example. I thought I followed it exactly but not sure what seems to not be right here. I am running sidux with KDE4........
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Here's the link to the iceweasel to firefox thread for other readers of this.

Update alternatives won't know about firefox until you tell it about it, not sure if that's possible unless you can pass it a hard coded path to the firefox executable.
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Ok thanks. I did find apparently another instance of firefox.desktop in the kde local folder. I'll say this all the bookmarks , flash, java and such were already there. I'll keep prodding around and see what I can find. Sorry I didn't post to the original link myself.
thanks,
deach
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Ok if someone that's only done this could tell me what I've missed. I have everything ok except if someone sends me a link in kopete I get this for instance
That's actually what shows in the address bar (which is this page I"m posting on here) but the page appears more like "plain text" rather than "html". ie no boxes, colors etc etc. this is of course the actual page to the address here at this page.

Any Help??
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Then you will see '>', enter:





The ### is the priority you want to give it, if you use a 100 for example will make it default in auto mode. You can give it a lower number and manually set it as default afterwards. With the --config option.
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EDIT" OK Duh....Let me try it again.............


Yielded that response........



I tried both ways looks like I'm missing something......Any further help?? Thanks Craigevil.
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