If I double click on the file "firefox-30.0.tar.bz2" then something called an archive manager starts and another window appears that shaows a folder call firefox. I then selected "extract" and made a folder for it to extract into. But I don't know what to do now. There are a number of executable files in the archive including "updater" but if I double click "updater" nothing happens.

Can anyone lend a hand ?

thanks! steve

The tar.bz2 is basically just a archive as you just extract and run the firefox script. There is no make or installer or updater in this.

You can then create a panel, desktop or such launcher to this firefox script. There is a firefox icon you can use in browser/icons/ folder.

The Check for Updates in About menu is only for the official builds from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ and not for builds you built yourself from source or third-party provided builds or packages like say from ubuntu.

Why are you using a old LTS version of Ubuntu from April 2010 and not 14.04 LTS trusty if it must be a LTS. http://distrowatch.org/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

Would link to distrowatch.com but it is down now for past twelve hours according to twitter yet .org is still up.

Ok thanks! How do I "extract and run the firefox script" ?

The 10.04 LTS version is needed due to a specialized program I have that only works on this OS. I am going to upgrade to the latest as a virtual machine though.

thanks, steve