firefox 2 and java on fedora core 6

To install Firefox 2 and JRE 6 on FC6, I downloaded both the self extracting files for both Firefox and JRE. The correct version of JRE to use is the i586 version as it contains the plugins directory needed for Firefox.

Installing Firefox2

Download the self extracting file and extract the files into some program location, I used /usr/local/firefox.

# mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/binfirefox_1.5

Try launching via terminal. To fix the libstdc++ error refer to this link, basically the steps are

# yum provides libstdc++.so.5
# yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33

After that is done, click on the browser shortcut and it will prompt you to look for the new firefox executable, select the new firefox file, i.e. /usr/local/firefox/firefox.

To install the JRE;

Go to the JAVA directory
# cd /usr/java/

Copy the file you downloaded from Sun to the JAVA root dir for extraction.
# cp /home/username/Desktop/jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin ./
# sh jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin

Create the softlink for Firefox
# cd /usr/local/firefox/plugins
# ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_01/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so