Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 and you can now install it in Gloria. The package name is “firefox-3.5”.

To install this package, you can use Synaptic, mintMenu, mintInstall, or simply the terminal:

• apt update
• apt install firefox-3.5

Once installed, your system will have both Firefox 3.0 and Firefox 3.5 and the item called “Firefox” in your menu will continue to point to Firefox 3.0.

To launch Firefox 3.5, you can use the command line and type “firefox-3.5” or you can click on the “Shiretoko Web browser – Firefox 3.5 Beta” item in your menu.

Don’t mind the fact that it’s called “Shiretoko” and that it mentions “Beta”, this version of Firefox is the stable 3.5 version. Upstream, Ubuntu decided to keep version 3.0 as the main Firefox version for Jaunty Jackalope users and since Firefox 3.1/3.5 was made available as a Beta (3.5b4) at the time, they apparently decided it should keep its beta name (Shiretoko).

You cannot run both Firefox 3.0 and Firefox 3.5 at the same time. To run one version, make sure all instances of the other one are closed.

If you like the new version of this browser, you can change your Firefox menu item and make it point to Firefox 3.5 by editing the file /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop as root, and by replacing the line “Exec=firefox %u” with “Exec=firefox-3.5 %u”.

Finally, if you want to have a look at the new features in Firefox 3.5, you can read the following articles:

• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/
• http://lifehacker.com/5295655/top-10-firefox-35-features

The terminal just got better as little improvements were made in apt (/usr/local/bin/apt) and a new “highlight” command was introduced in mintsystem.

Improvements in apt:

• apt was completely rewritten in Python
• The search, show, content, contains, version, policy, depends, and rdepends now come with color highlighting
• sudo is now only used when necessary, so “apt search” for instance doesn’t require a password anymore.
• The help was improved and is now shown by simply typing “apt”.
• A new help command shows the Debian APT equivalent of the apt command you typed.
• And for the APT addicts among you, Super Cow Powers were added.

highlight:

• highlight is a new python script placed in /usr/local/bin and provided by the mintsystem package
• it highlights keywords in different colors
• for instance “lspci | highlight VGA USB Ethernet Wireless” shows the normal output of lspci but with “VGA” highlighted in red, “USB” in green, “Ethernet” in yellow, and “Wireless” in blue.

Of course there’s nothing new or revolutionary here, just a few incremental improvements. The terminal is extremely important, and although almost everything can be done graphically nowadays, it represents for many people a simpler/faster way to achieve what they want. It’s always been more precise, more exhaustive… in many respect, a better tool, than most alternative graphical user interfaces, so it’s only natural we make it as confortable as a terminal can be.

Comments and ideas are welcome. These commands can certainly be improved further. If you think something’s missing please speak up.

Note: The commands and improvements mentioned above are available in mintsystem, versions 7.4.9 or greater.