I finally figured out how to install plugins (as distinct from extensions) in Fedora Core 7 Firefox. If you’re not too clear on the distinction between plugins and extensions, welcome to the club. All I really know is that Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Flash are plugins; extensions are different.
Anyway, to install these valuable plugins proceed as follows:
- Log on to your system as an administrative user. (You should normally work as a restricted, “normal” user so that if you stumble into a booby-trapped webpage, its malicious code will not have the power to wreck your entire system.)
- Navigate to Edit->Preferences.
- On the Main tab, select “Always ask me where to save files” and then click Close.
- Navigate to Tools->Add ons.
- Note that there is no mention of plugins in the dialog box; click on Get Extensions. This will take you to the Mozilla.org extension selection webpage.
- Click on the Plugins link. (Apparently “Add ons” can be either extensions, themes, dictionaries, search engines or plugins, so the Get Extensions link you clicked on in step 4 should have been labelled Get Add ons.)
- The Plugins link should take you to a page where you can install the Adobe plugins as well as some other things that may not be available in a Linux/Fedora Core 7 version. Click to install whatever interests you.
- From this point on, don’t cancel out if there are long pauses. Patience is a virtue when dealing with highly popular websites.
- I like to install the rpm (Red Hat Package Manager) versions. When you select or click on the rpm version link, Fedora will usually ask you if you want to open the file with the package manager; confirm that and the rest should go swimmingly (of sometimes slowly). If, however, Fedora pops up a dialog asking you if you want to open it with something that’s not the package manager, hold everything. If you are able to choose something like “package manager” or “installer” from a drop-down list, do that. Otherwise, you’ll have to spell out the exact path to the rpm program to get the downloaded rpm file to install correctly. In my Fedora Core 7 installation, the program is /bin/rpm. The reason I’m blogging this is that I experienced a considerable amount of frustration before figuring all this out, and would like to share the information.
Good luck, and I hope this advice helps.