The versioning of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, and the rebranded Iceweasel browser in Debian, going from 3.6.x to 4.x and now 5.x and 6.x has Linux users (and Debian users in particular) constantly messing with their sources to make sure they’ve got the version of Iceweasel they want.

As I explain below, the Debian Mozilla team APT archive has got you covered. But first a little more informational whining:

Almost as soon as the Firefox/Iceweasel 4.x series started, it abruptly ended in favor of 5.x. This is going to keep happening. It’s not that changes in the software are that radical. It’s just version-number-creep on the part of Mozilla. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but I could care less. I just want a recent, patched version of the browser (and the Thunderbird/Icedove mail client) on my Debian Squeeze system.

Good news for Debian Squeeze users is that Icedove is in Debian Backports. But not Iceweasel (to the best of my knowledge anyway).

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I’ve added a few packages from Debian Backports related to LibreOffice to my Squeeze installation:

libreoffice-pdfimport (on the chance that I’ll actually do this some day)

and more importantly:

libreoffice-gnome, which makes LibreOffice look like it belongs in the GTK/GNOME world I’m working in.

libreoffice-gnome brought along a couple of dependencies, libreoffice-gtk and libreoffice-style-tango

I also added the mozilla-libreoffice plugin.

Packages I didn’t add

I didn’t add the libreoffice-emailmerge and libreoffice-evolution plugins because I can’t see using them.

Disclaimer: I used the Synaptic Package Manager to install the new packages. Once you have a new repository (like Debian Backports) set up, you can pluck packages at will in Synaptic without any special command-line magic, if that’s your thing (avoiding command-line magic) — not that there’s anything wrong with it.