Firefox Downgrade – How to Install Previous Firefox Version

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I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 and I use the Perapera Chinese add-on for Firefox. It worked up to version 39, but now in version 40 it just stopped working. So I tried to downgrade to version 39 following this link, where there are two options:

1) Choose from the list here, but I have no idea which of the 11 subversions should I use.

2) Download the only version suggested in the link above, i.e. this.

I chose the 2nd option, but after decompressing the file, I have a 'Firefox' folder with lots of files and executables that don't run, just give an error message:

XPCOMGlueLoad error for file (...)/firefox/libxul.so:
libXcomposite.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM.

There's a 'run-mozilla.sh', but 'bash run-mozilla.sh' gives:

run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute .

I REALLY would like to use Perapera add-on to study Chinese. So, is there an easy way to downgrade to Firefox 39? Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

You may have two choice to choose for installing method:

  1. Via Mozilla's ftp site (kudos for @Bhikku for sharing the link !). For example we're going to install firefox 50. First, remove any existing version.

    sudo apt-get purge firefox

    Then run following command to download firefox 50 source code, which comes as .tar file.

    wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/50.0/linux-$(uname -m)/en-US/firefox-50.0.tar.bz2

    Extract the package.

    tar -xjf firefox-50.0.tar.bz2

    Move firefox to /opt directory.

    sudo mv firefox /opt/

    Create symlink in order to set the new firefox as default.

    sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox_old
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

  2. Via UbuntuZilla which offer .deb files, to install follow the instruction below.

Remove firefox first : 

sudo apt-get purge firefox

Run following command to download firefox :

32 Bit

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt/pool/main/f/firefox-mozilla-build/firefox-mozilla-build_39.0.3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

64 Bit 

wget sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/mozilla/apt/pool/main/f/firefox-mozilla-build/firefox-mozilla-build_39.0.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Install it :

32 Bit

cd Downloads/ && sudo dpkg -i firefox-mozilla-build_39.0.3-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

64 Bit 

cd Downloads/ && sudo dpkg -i firefox-mozilla-build_39.0.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

And firefox should run the 39 version

Quote from ubuntuzilla official wiki page :

This is the home of the Ubuntuzilla project, hosts an APT repository with .deb repacks of the latest official release versions of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla SeaMonkey, and Mozilla Thunderbird.

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