How to make Firefox or other programs run?

[DougSmithshop]

I have installed FOSSAPUP-64 9.5 Frugal on a Gateway MX6445 laptop running an AMD Turion 64 processor with 1MB RAM, 120GB HDD formatted ext2 with gparted, 1280 x 1024 ATI-RS480 graphics, Broadcom B4318 WiFi adapter, ethernet, telephone modem memory card, PCMCIA, serial RS-232(C), Firewire, headphone, microphone, and four USB ports.

Using Puppy Package Manager (PPM) I 'installed' Firefox from the ubuntu-focal-main repo. It does not appear on the desktop or in the menu / internet. I searched the directories and found the installation and clicked on each and
every file and it would not run. I searched online and found all sorts of instructions, none of which worked because they use apt, apt-git, install, and other commands not available in Puppy. Searching this forum, I found instructions for putting an item on the desktop and built the following script, saving it in /root/my-applications/bin as Firefox: (I drug the file to the desktop, placing the Firefox logo there.)
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox
Comment=Browse Internet...
Exec=#!/opt/firefox/firefox
Icon=firefox
Type=Application
Terminal=false clicked Fixmenus and restarted graphical server
Categories=Internet This did absolutely nothing after clicking the icon.

I also tried:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox
Comment=Browse Internet...
Exec=/opt/firefox/firefox
Icon=firefox
Type=Application
Terminal=false clicked Fixmenus and restarted graphical server
Categories=Internet Again, this did absolutely nothing

and

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox
Comment=Browse Internet...
#!/opt/firefox/
Exec=firefox
Icon=firefox
Type=Application
Terminal=false clicked Fixmenus and restarted graphical server
Categories=Internet And, Again, this did absolutely nothing

It should be pretty obvious at this point that I don't know what I am doing.
Please help this 78-year-old great-grandfather figure how to use this "Grandpa Friendly - certified." system
(https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/ see puppy advantages, line 2!)

[rockedge]

@DougSmithshop First of all Welcome to the kennels!

Best bet to install firefox is NOT to use the PPM to do it. This is the easy way:

Use the browser that is available in Fossapup to search for Firefox for Linux or go to this link-> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/download/thanks/ and then download that file.

Open up the Rox file manager and the firefox file should be in the Downloads folder. Click on this file which is a .tar.bz2 compressed archive file and it should open up in Xarchiver or similar extraction program that will decompress the file which you will do right there in the Download folder.

Open up a second Rox window and go into the /opt directory. Now copy or move the entire firefox folder from the Download folder to the /opt folder. Now go into the firefox folder in /opt/firefox and look for the file "firefox" and drag and drop that file onto the desktop. You can position the icon where you want on the desktop. This action will only create a link or shortcut for you on the desktop. There is a way to assign a nice firefox icon to this link on the desktop but we'll discuss that later. First click on that new firefox icon on the desk top and Firefox should start up.

Please let us know how you get along and if it works for you or you need more help and/or some better description of the steps!
(I could include some screenshots if it's confusing).
Also there are more ways of doing this so one way or another we will help you get going. Like the example in the next post using the QuickPet method. Good Luck.

[bigpup]

Welcome to Puppy Land!

Browsers are one of those programs that Puppy Package Manager(PPM) is not the best place to get it.
PPM can access repositories of software that was not specifically compiled for Puppy Linux.
For Fossapup64 PPM the stuff may be compiled for Ubuntu Fossa.
Most of it will work OK in Fossapup64, because it is using the same core Linux files and programs Ubuntu Fossa is using.
Sorry, this is a possible issue using PPM.

To start out fresh use Puppy Package Manager -> Unistall to remove the Firefox install you did.
Reboot so the Fossapup64 save gets update to this change and for sure it is no longer stored in the save.

Fossapup64 9.5 has a program Quickpet (icon on desktop)
Use Quickpet -> Browsers -> Firefox

This install should work with a entry in menu -> Internet

This info will help you understand Linux software and Puppy Linux:
viewtopic.php?t=1819
.
.

[Flash]

Surely you meant 1GB of RAM, not 1MB.

I've never installed Firefox from PPM. Either it came with the particular Puppy I tried or I downloaded it from here. If you download if from the Mozilla website, no installation is necessary; it will run from the Firefox directory once it's decompressed. After I have decompressed the Firefox directory and put it where I want it (the /opt directory as rockedge suggests), I right-click on the directory (in Rox), select Permissions, then Yes (to make it executable). Then I open the Firefox directory, find the gear-shaped icon labeled Firefox, right click on it, choose Permissions, then Yes again. After that, you can drag the Firefox gear icon to the desktop before you click on it, or just click on it in the Firefox directory to open Firefox.

Oops, I see that several people posted while I was typing this. Well, I think we mostly agree.

[bigpup]

All good info about how to get Firefox.

With Linux there is always 10 ways to do anything

We are Puppy!
Resistance is futile!
Learn you must

[mikeslr]

Hello, DougSmithshop, and welcome to the Kennels.

For the reason I'll explain below, although I would advise you to use firefox portable obtained from here, viewtopic.php?p=37559&sid=b2a6e72f4c8a8 ... 39c#p37559, reading your post what I found most jarring was "120GB HDD formatted ext2 with gparted".

While some puppians have reported never having a problem with ext2, it is 'old-technology' --if I'm not mistaken dating from 1992 which in computer years is at least 100 years ago-- many Linux users have complained about it becoming corrupted=unusable with the loss of everything on it. So before you become 'deep in the weeds' fleshing out your operating system I would suggest that you take a couple steps backward and reformat your hard-drive as Linux Ext3 [or if you did the formatting using a Puppy's gparted Linux Ext4.
Other Linux's format Linux Ext4 as 64-bit. While Puppys can be run from 64-bit Linux Ext4, some Puppy bootloaders can't. You did not mention what bootloader you are using. Puppy's gparted formats Linux Ext4 as 32-bit].

You should take the time to read, How Puppys Work, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 827#p55827 even though rockedge suggests it's an advanced topic. A short 'layman's version' might go like this: A frugal Puppy operates in RAM by, at boot-up, copying files from some of the file-systems on storage into RAM and creating in RAM links to other file-systems.
In short, it achieves its speed and responsiveness by 'Running in RAM' rather than constantly reading from and writing to Storage. You should also read How Puppy Linux Save Works, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 818#p63818.

And if you did NOT do a Frugal Install you definitely should back up and replace your 'full install' with a Frugal Install. Frugal is exactly the same operating system; not a 'cut-down' version. Frugal merely reflects that it does not require --but can use-- its own partition. There are many advantages to a Frugal Install, not the least of which is that it is easy to recover from mistakes. It is almost impossible to 'fix' a broken Full Install.

Depending on what cites you visit, 100s of Mbs of cache can be downloaded in a hour and if allowed to accumulate can grow to Gbs in a couple of days.

firefox --all web-browsers designed for other Linux operating systems-- expect that web-cache will be written to the user's Home folder on Storage. That doesn't happen by default in Frugal Puppys as the Home Folder is /root and /root is in RAM. You can configure other types of firefox to locate 'cache' in Storage. firefox-portable is like Window portables: they can be run from anywhere. When run from a folder on your hard-drive rather than installed into Puppy, cache is automatically directed to Storage. [Even with a 120 Gb hard-drive, you should configure cache to be deleted once in a while; say when you close firefox]. Portable-firefox can be updated in place: you won't have to uninstall an old version in order to use a new. And there are other advantage I'll tell you about if you are interested.

[DougSmithshop]

Thank you, Bigpup, and Flash.

[Flash]

Thank you, Bigpup, and Flash.

Thank us by telling us what you did that worked.