Linux * Screw

If you downloaded fresh Firefox 3 installation e.g. from here and tried to install it in Debian Etch, you might notice that latest version of the popular browser requires GTK+ 2.10 while Etch contains only 2.8:

We're sorry, this application requires a version of the GTK+
library that is not installed on your computer.
You have GTK+ 2.8.This application requires GTK+ 2.10 or newer.Please upgrade your GTK+ library if you wish to use this application

Thankfully there is no need to upgrade GTK+, the tips given here (and here) will keep you from headache. The only thing that is necessary to do to get Firefox 3 working at Debian Etch, is to get GTK+ from backports by the following commands:

wget http://apt.linex.org/linex/gtk-2.10/libgtk2.0-0_2.10.13-2%7Ebpo.1_i386.deb
dpkg-deb -x libgtk2.0-0_2.10.13-2~bpo.1_i386.deb gtk2-10

Then copy contents of newly created directory gtk2-10 to /opt/firefox3 and add the following line into /opt/firefox3/firefox:

#!/bin/sh
#
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/firefox3/gtk2-10/usr/lib"

It is necessary to inform Firefox where is new GTK+ is located Now it’s time to start Firefox…

P.S. In other distributions you can try to compile/install GTK+2.10 manually:

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtk+/2.10/gtk+-2.10.14.tar.bz2
tar xjf gtk+-2.10.14.tar.bz2
mkdir gtk210
cd gtk+-2.10.14
./configure --prefix=/opt/firefox3/gtk2-10
make install