[nflug] (Re)Installing Firefox, Thunderbird, and OOo under Kubuntu

[Boice]

Joe wrote:
> Hi.  I am now a happy user of kubuntu dapper.  Almost everything I
> need works (until I head off into wine land for my Windoze apps.)
> except my blinking modem.
>
> Anyway, I have OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and Thunderbird installed via
> adept and naturally, they're not the latest versions.
>
> In the past (Mandrake 9.1), when I tried to install these myself it
> was easy to do as single user installs, but I never figured out how to
> install them so all users could access them.
>
> I want to keep up with the latest versions - especially for ff and tb
> to keep them secure.
>
> 1) What's the (a) right way to do this for each of these packages?
>
> Do I uninstall them from adept first?
>
> Can I keep any configurations I have done or do I need to do them all
> over from scratch?
>
> I haven't used tb to get any email yet, so I don't have any to lose. 
> It's all still on the Windoze side until I get things working.
>
> TIA
>
> Joe
>
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>
Hi, Joe.

Ordinarily, one would install as "root" and then all users will have
access to the installed progs you have mentioned.

Ubuntu has an [to me, irritating] approach of having no root user, but
allowing sudo commands to be issued via one's regular user password.
https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/kubuntu/desktopguide/C/root-and-sudo.html
You can install or upgrade progs through adept package manager using sudo:
https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/kubuntu/desktopguide/C/adept.html

If --as the primary user-- you did this, and other users still are not
able to launch those programs, you can try making a root account for
your kubuntu installation. See:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

Personally, I found Ubuntu  a pain to maintain on a multi-user machine,
and switched the family's computer back to Mepis when Mepis version 6
came out.  If you like the KDE desktop, I'd recommend Mepis 6 over
Kubuntu Dapper.  I've heard complaints that KDE wasn't as stable on
Ubuntu as Gnome.

I just installed Xubuntu Edgy on my personal multi-boot machine, but
haven't had much chance to really put it though it's paces. My general
impression so far is that Edgy may be more stable than Dapper, when it
was supposed to be the other way around!  I won't swear to that,
however. It's just an initial impression. However, since I spent a lot
of irritating hours as an alpha-tester for Dapper,  that may have
colored my [dim] view of 6.06.

If you don't have any configurations that are irreproducible, you could
get away with attempting an upgrade without backing up the configuration
files for OO, Firefox & T-bird. Not sure how "adept" handles it, but in
synaptic package manager, you have the option to uninstall a prog or
COMPLETELY uninstall it.  "Completely" also removes the user's
configuration files & options.  "Plain" Uninstalling just the old
version and also installing the updated version ought to keep your
config files OK.
Probably.
Possibly.
Maybe.

Not a bad idea to back up the data in your /home partition to a separate
partition on your HDD, or to a USB thumbdrive, or a rewritable DVD or
something. 

I don't always need it right away, but sometimes I've saved myself hours
of tears and self-loathing by making a few spare data partitions to keep
"historical records" of config files.  In one case I rescued something
that had not been missed for a couple months. But when I realized I
wished I had access to the old config info, it made my day sweet to
actually be able to dig it out.

cheers,
John




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