Does Mozilla have a Death Wish?

Yesterday afternoon, when I started my lab PC and logged onto the Internet, I discovered that Firefox had automatically updated itself to the next version. I had stayed with the 3.6.xx versions of Firefox out of concern that some of my add-ons wouldn't work under FF 4 or 5. Indeed, there has been a BUNCH of complaining online about such compatibility issues with the newer Firefox releases. Since I had been running 3.6.18, it updated to 3.6.20. As a result, java runtime didn't work any more. Oddly, flash ran great, but no java. I checked the mozilla plugins directory; the symlinks to the flash and java plugins were there. All looked well, but no java. So I tried removing the symlink to java and re-creating that. Still no success.

I have spent all afternoon today looking through online forums, uninstalling, and reinstalling Firefox - all to no avail. I downloaded, unzipped, and attempted to install Firefox 6, but the install scripts wouldn't work. No info available on this from Mozilla or any other forum I checked online.

Tonight I performed a clean install of Firefox 5.0. Oddly, there was NO mozilla plugins directory created in the process. I used the mkdir command and created my own mozilla plugins directory. Therein I created the symlinks to the flash player and java plugins. Flash works great on you-tube but java is still broken, so I can't access my online college courses using Firefox. And classes start next Monday.

Mozilla's troubleshooting guides, forums, ... are silent on this. And of course, there's nobody to yell at.

THANKS, Mozilla!!

I'll be testing Opera 11 and Google Chrome this weekend - though I've heard terrible things about the security of both these products.

As things sit right now I have the choice of a buggy, insecure operating system (Windows) with a fully functioning web browser(IE 9), or a good, relatively secure operating system (LINUX) and a lousy, broken web browser. Great way to start a new semester.

Sorry, but I HAVE to ask:
Does Mozilla have a death wish? Are they being paid by Micro$oft to torpedo the competition?? Is their management really as clueless as they appear??? Have they become "pod people" - occupied by alien body snatchers????

I don't have the answers to these burning questions. If any of my readers have any insight into this madness, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section. I'm absolutely stumped!

What I do know is that folks who work for a living and/or have other "mission critical" activities they are doing (Graduate school, in my case) do NOT HAVE TIME TO WASTE ON THIS NONSENSE!!!!

I seriously think Mozilla may have to lose most of its user base before they wise up. Many folks will simply take the easy way out and put up with M$ IE, rather than fight this kind of hassle. That would be a crying shame, as Firefox and LINUX were indeed a pretty unbeatable combination until recently.