How to Switch back to Mozilla Firefox 2 in Ubuntu 8.10

With the increased frequency of crashes of FireFox 3 in Linux, I thought of switching back to good old FF 2. Ubuntu 8.10 is shipped with FF 3, and luckily there is a method to keep FF 3 and install FF 2 in the same machine without any conflicts.

I am listing down the steps I followed and the original source that I referred can be found here.

First you need to modify the source list, so that it refers to the package sources of Ubuntu Gusty. Before changing that do not forget to keep a copy of the current sources list. Following command will make a copy of the current sources list and save it as sources.list.backup

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup

Now start modifying the content of the original sources.list.

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Now replace the content of this file with the following list

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner
deb http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy main universe restricted multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-security universe main multiverse restricted
deb http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universe main multiverse restricted
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free

Now get a update and install FireFox 2

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-2

Once the above commands are successfully completed FF2 will be installed and it will be ready to install. But changing the package sources to an older version will make the system unstable. So replace the modified sources list with the original one.

sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list.backup /etc/apt/sources.list

Now get a update for the package sources.

sudo apt-get update

Now the FF 2 is installed without any conflicts with FF 3.

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