Need to revert to Firefox 3.5 after Lucid upgrade

you can maually select the version in your terminal by first removing and then going to specific version

sudo apt-get remove firefox ?.?.? ## whatever version

apt-get autoclean

apt-get autoremove

then

sudo apt-get install _________

your terminal is under application>acessories>terminal

dont give up!!!

Thank you, subliminalfix, for your suggestions. Unfortunately this did not solve the problem. Below I will paste a record of what I typed in the terminal window and what happened. In summary: I tried it, and it took me back to Firefox 3.6.3.

When I use Synaptic's package manager to see what is installed I see:
   firefox Installed Version: 3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4
   firefox-3.5 Installed Version: 3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4
   firefox-branding Installed Version: 3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4
plus some other things that match a search for "firefox" namely: ubufox, xul-ext-wbfav, flashplugin-installer, totem mozilla, latex-xft-fonts, xulrunner-1.9.2

The firefox-3.5 package has a description "dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.5 -> firefox", "This is a transitional package so firefox-3.5 users get firefox on upgrades. It can safely be removed".

I've tried removing this transitional package. But in just comes back again each time I go through the sequence of commands in the terminal window ;-(

I won't give up, but I'd appreciate some more suggestions. Thanks.

====Transcript of Terminal Session ======
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get remove firefox 3.6.3
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package 3.6.3
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get remove firefox-3.6.3
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package firefox-3.6.3
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get remove firefox
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED
  firefox firefox-branding
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 29.7MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
(Reading database ... 147766 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing firefox ...
Removing firefox-branding ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_GB.utf8.cache...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for python-support ...
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get install firefox 3.5.9
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package 3.5.9
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5.9
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package firefox-3.5.9
john@JDM-NB:~$ sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  firefox firefox-branding
Suggested packages:
  firefox-gnome-support kmozillahelper
The following NEW packages will be installed
  firefox firefox-3.5 firefox-branding
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/11.1MB of archives.
After this operation, 29.8MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Selecting previously deselected package firefox-branding.
(Reading database ... 147519 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking firefox-branding (from .../firefox-branding_3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package firefox.
Unpacking firefox (from .../firefox_3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package firefox-3.5.
Unpacking firefox-3.5 (from .../firefox-3.5_3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4_all.deb) ...
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_GB.utf8.cache...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Processing triggers for python-support ...
Setting up firefox-branding (3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4) ...
Setting up firefox (3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/firefox to provide /usr/bin/x-www-browser (x-www-browser) in auto mode.
Please restart all running instances of firefox, or you will experience problems.

Setting up firefox-3.5 (3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4) ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
john@JDM-NB:~$

====== End of Transcript ======

Restarted Firefox and checked version:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100423 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.3

im sorry your having trouble im unsure as theres a way around this in ubuntu. im going to add comment so i

hope this stays open .you may consider saving files to disk or usb and switching to suse. they also have the

gnome desktop

and you can pick the version you want to use in there repository. it will give you the newest,but you can

choose to keep a "depreciated"version.

subliminalfix, thank you for your comment.

I'm hoping someone else can come up with a solution to my problem without having to abandon Ubuntu. Surely I'm not the only Ubuntu user in the world who needs Google Gears compatibility until Google becomes HTML5 compliant.

Let's see if someone else can provide a solution for reverting to Firefox 3.5 in Lucid.

Thank you, S.Rey, for your suggestion. I have followed the instructions as the ubuntuzilla location you refer to and added this repository:
    http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt
Unfortunately this is only adding the latest version of the Firefox to the packages I can see in Synaptic Package Manager i.e. 3.6.3-0ubuntu1. Still no sign of an opportunity to load Firefox version 3.5.

Is there something more I should do to use ubuntuzilla to get not-the-latest version of Firefox? Or can someone please suggest an alternative approach.

I've solved this problem. For others who have the same problem:

I found that Ubuntuzilla do have older versions of Firefox as installable packages (.deb) on the sourceforge site referred to above. I downloaded from:
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/mozilla/apt/pool/main/f/firefox-mozilla-build/firefox-mozilla-build_3.5.7-0ubuntu2_i386.deb/download
and installed this directly by opening the "firefox-mozilla-build_3.5.7-0ubuntu2_i386.deb" that came down. During the install it said that there was a later version available but I ignored this warning.

Now I have Firefox 3.5.7 available as "Mozilla Build of Firefox" and Firefox 3.6.3 available as "Firefox". Google Gears is working with Firefox 3.5.7 on Lucid and is busily resynching my offline Gmail access.

The rendering of fonts is a bit rough but this issue seems to be addressed at:
   http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1200992

Thank you to S.Rey and subliminalfix for their suggestions.

Thanks S.Rey, that solved my question.

This thread has been helpful for me—thank you. I've been looking for a version of FireFox older than 3.6.8, because the Selenium IDE plug-in currently doesn't support it.

I had to poke around SourceForce a bit to find those older builds. To save others from having to do the same, here's the URL for where they're all listed: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/mozilla/apt/pool/main/f/firefox-mozilla-build

Thanks,
MS.

Actually there is a much better solution to my specific problem - getting Google Gears to work when Ubuntu upgrades move you to Firefox 3.6.

You do NOT need to revert to Firefox 3.5. Do NOT use the version of Gears that Google tries to download from its site. Use the version of Gears in the Ubuntu repositories (xul-ext-gears) which does work with Firefox 3.6. To get it to work you may need to completely clean out your ~/.mozilla/ folders and start again.

The earlier posts in this thread may still be helpful to those needing to go back to earlier versions of Firefox for other reasons.