How to: Install Firefox in Debian Wheezy

This post covers the installation of Mozilla Firefox in Gnome 2 environment.

Step 1:

Download the latest Mozilla Firefox from the official website (choose language and distribution).

Step 2:

Extract firefox-29.0.1.tar.bz2 (version may be different). Using unp may be a good idea, it's always handy:

unp firefox-29.0.1.tar.bz2

or just use tar:

tar xvjf firefox-29.0.1.tar.bz2

Step 3:

Move the firefox/ folder to opt/:

sudo mv firefox/ /opt

Step 4:

Apply permissions to users. This is needed to run firefox from the Applications menu, but the permissions you give it are your choice. I chose to allow superuser and sudoers write and execute permissions, and guest users only execute:

sudo chmod 750 firefox/

Step 5:

Create an alias inside the bin folder so you can call firefox from the terminal. I called it realfirefox since firefox was already used by Iceweasel xD.

sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/realfirefox

Step 6:

Create an Applications menu entry so you can use Firefox from the Internet menu, like this:

cd /usr/share/applications/

Create a .desktop file for Firefox:

touch firefox.desktop

And with a text editor like gedit

gksudo gedit firefox.desktop

paste this inside the firefox.desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Mozilla Firefox
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/usr/bin/realfirefox %U
Icon=/opt/firefox/browser/icons/mozicon128.png
StartupNotify=true
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;

Voilà! By now you should have you beloved Firefox working via GUI. But remember, for every Firefox version, you have to repeat this process.