Replace Firefox With Other Firefox

The Mozilla Firefox web browser comes in two flavors:  regular and extra crispy.

Most of us just use the regular version.  However, the other version is slightly older and tends to be more stable.

Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR 60)
The new super-fast Firefox, with features for IT professionals to configure and deploy Firefox in their organization.

Don’t let that scare you.  Both flavors are fully supported and updated by Mozilla.  It’s just that the ESR version is maintained longer per version.  The current version of Firefox is 62.0.3, while the highest ESR version is 60.3.0.

Windows 7 through 10 users can “upgrade” to Firefox ESR by simply downloading their preferred language and bit (32 or 64) version.

Double-click the file to install.

And you’re done!

In Windows, this will replace your current version of Firefox (if installed), but will not delete bookmarks or extensions.  It’s quick and painless.

Linux is a bit trickier to install.  If you are using an Ubuntu based OS, the easiest method is to add a PPA (Personal Package Archive) to your existing repositories.

Open a terminal and copy-and-paste the following command and hit [Enter]:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa

Enter your super-secret password to add this repository to your system.

Open Synaptic and click reload button.  Search for firefox esr.  Install.  Then scroll down the list to find your desired language pack and install.  (I said it was trickier.)  This does not replace your current Firefox install.  Linux users will have both versions available.

It’s always nice to have options!

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Legal Hiring Discrimination

The Act prohibits employment discrimination in its programs on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, and marital or familial status. Added as an amendment to Title VII , it expands the protection of Title VII to public and private employers with 15 or more employees, both public and private labor organizations with at least 15 members, and employment agencies.

An employer is prohibited by law from discriminating against a potential hire based on these 10 criteria.  But they can discriminate against you based on something you use.

Above is an actual screenshot taken from an online job application.  This is not a government agency.  It’s from a private company.  The name was remove for my protection.

Nicotine addicts be warned!  You could be turned down for jobs legally.

I’m not saying that I agree with this; I’m not saying I disagree with this.  I’m telling you that this is now a trend that will affect a lot of people as this policy spreads to more industries.

Microsoft Still Blocking Third-Party Browser Installs

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Try to install Google’s Chrome browser in Windows 10 (1809) and receive this warning:

Despite the fact that Microsoft earlier claimed that this “feature” had already been removed for Windows 10.

According to this Softpedia article, “Microsoft has removed the warning displayed on Windows 10 preview builds that attempted to block the installation of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.”

To correct this issue, click on Change my app recommendation settings.

Click on the down arrow to select a new option.

Select “Turn off app recommendations” by clicking on that option.

Close the settings program, close the blocking window and install whatever you want.

Yes, Microsoft!  This is exactly why we hate the Edge browser.  Because you keep trying to ram it down our throats.

 

Running Classic MS Calculator on Windows 10

Calculator, a Windows program that has been around since the beginning of Windows, does not appear in the Programs > Windows Accessories menu in Windows 10.  Instead, you get the Math Input Panel.

I looked and looked but could not find the Classic Calculator program icon.

There is a calculator in the Apps menu, but it’s not the same as my beloved Classic Calculator.

I had one of those…

…moments.

Where, oh where could my program be?

I held down the [Windows] key and pressed the [R] key to bring up the run command and typed calc.exe before hitting the [Enter] key.

Boom!  Well, not so boom.  This still isn’t the Classic Calculator from days of Windows yore.

Here we go again!  Extract calc.exe from Windows XP and drop it into Windows 10 (1809).

Boom!  There it is!

But you know something…  It looks better running on Linux with WINE than it does running on the newest version of Windows.

The moral of our story:  Never mess with perfection!

The Curious Case of the Windows 10 1809 ISO Image

The new Windows is here!  The new Windows here!

Which looks just like the old Windows.

Windows 10 users can now upgrade to the latest (not necessarily the greatest) version of Windows 10.

And if that doesn’t work, you can always force the upgrade using Windows10Upgrade9252.exe from Microsoft.

And if that doesn’t work, you can download the Windows 10 1809 ISO image.

The download says that the file is 4.5GB in size.  It should only require a single-layer (4.7GB, DVD-5) blank DVD to burn the image.

However, when I downloaded the ISO image, it was 4.8GB in size.

My first thought was that maybe my system is reporting the file size incorrectly.  So I tried to burn the file to a standard blank DVD-5.

FAIL!

My system is still telling me that I need a dual-layer blank DVD-9 if I want to burn the image to a disk.

Perhaps the individual files in the image are not adding up correctly.  You can use a Zip program to inspect the contents of an ISO image.

What?  The Sources folder by itself is 4.8GB in size.

I’m not sure what’s going on.  But despite this little hiccup, I was able to upgrade from 1803 to 1809 using the normal upgrade process built into Windows 10.

The only other issue I found was the Windows 10 bootloader no longer ran on my dual-boot system.

So I had repair the boot manager using EasyBCD.

That fixed the problem.

Upgrade or don’t, it’s all up to you.  Just make sure you back up all of your data first.  Just in case.

Windows 10 (1809) (click to enlarge)

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Footnote:  Classic Shell still works on Windows 10 1809.  Yay!

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Update:

I tried burning the Windows 10 1809 ISO image to a DVD-5 using Nero in Windows 7 with the same results.  Not enough space on a DVD-5 (single-layer) disk.

FAIL!  AGAIN!