Hey, any Linux pros here?

[TubbaBlubba]

Having a bit of an annoying issue in Ubuntu here. Firefox 4 isn't available via Synaptic yet, so I just downloaded it and ran it via command line. No problem there.

But, there's this whole deal with "Preferred applications" and outside hyperlinks. I figured there's got to be some way to get the system to use this Firefox to open hyperlinks, but my efforts have failed;

Under System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications -> Internet, I picked "Custom" and entered ~/firefox/firefox %s, %s being a substitute for the hyperlink. This command works fine if I open a terminal and enter, say, ~/firefox/firefox http://mozilla.com, in which case it will open firefox if it isn't open, otherwise just open a new tab with mozilla.com

But when I enter the bolded above into the "custom" box, and then click a hyperlink, I get a terminal window and "There was an error creating the child process for this terminal". I've googled around, but I can't find any help relevant to my problem. If I had it installed via synaptic, it'd just be something like firefox %s, I think.

So, any ideas?

 

[Alan]

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/firefox-4-ppa-for-ubuntu-10-04-and-10-10-users/

Doing it that way worked for me.

 

[Captain_Snort]

If you use ubuntu, and something is not available, always worth googling it and adding 'ppa' after the name. Someone may have decided to package it up direct, it even may be semi-official. Just be aware, they are private repositories, and, like Ubuntu (and your expensive windows), come with absolutely no warranty.

 

[deep]

Two things to try:

a) use the full path, instead of a ~, because not all shells recognize that
b) put %s in double-quotes

e.g., /path/to/your/user/firefox/firefox "%s"

 

[TubbaBlubba]

a) use the full path, instead of a ~, because not all shells recognize that

This worked! Thanks a lot, can't believe I didn't think of that.

 

[Bilbo]

Use Chromium, it's waiting in the software center!