How do I install GNUzilla IceCat on a raspberry pi?

Question

I'm looking for a version of Mozilla Firefox for the raspberry pi that isn't so restrictive on it's use of the logo. So instead I would like to install GNU Icecat with the cute logo. I'm running raspbian buster on a raspberry pi 3B+.

Attempts

• Following the instructions on the Ubuntu wiki failed to produce an executable binary.

wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/60.3.0/icecat-60.3.0.en-US.gnulinux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Correctly saved the file.

sudo tar -xvf icecat* -C /usr/bin/icecat/installed

Correctly extracts it, but

$ sh /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 1: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: ELF: not found
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 1: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/ice: not found
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 2: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: @@@@@@0pp@p@@@����: not found
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 1: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: cannot open �0�A3: No such file
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 1: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: �@: not found
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 10: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: ��A��
           ��AEE: not found
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: 2: /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string

Am I doing something wrong? Am I wrong to assume that these Ubuntu instructions would work for other Debian like systems such as Raspbian?

Answer 1

If I follow your commands, first I get an error massage tar: /usr/bin/icecat/installed: Cannot open: No such file or directory. First I had to create it with before unpacking the archive:

rpi ~$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/bin/icecat/installed
rpi ~$ sudo tar -xvf icecat* -C /usr/bin/icecat/installed

Now if I look at icecat with file I find:

rpi ~$ file /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat
/usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=d043e81b32b71a57818b9aa510aced22459e40d7, stripped

As you can see icecat is an executable ELF file so you cannot start it as shell script with sh /usr/bin/icecat/installed/icecat/icecat as you did. But the most imporant information is that it is a 64-bit executable compiled for X86 (intel proccesor). Neither a 64-bit program can run on a 32 bit operating system like Raspbian nor can an X86 program run on an ARM processor.

Answer 2

Am I wrong to assume that these Ubuntu instructions would work for other Debian like systems such as Raspbian?

It's not the difference between Ubuntu and Debian and Raspbian; you can install Ubuntu or Debian on a Pi if you want, but those instructions will than not work any better then they did on Raspbian.

The problem is the type of CPU. Executable code is compiled for specific instruction set architectures (ISAs). For example, there is x86-64, which that tar.gz file was labelled as. This means it was compiled for the most commonly used ISA on desktops and laptops.

No model of Raspberry Pi is compatible with x86-64 executables. They require code that is compiled for a range of ARM processors. Further explanation here: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/49809/5538

If you cannot find a pre-compiled icecat for the Pi, it might be possible to compile it yourself on the Pi from source code. However, I recommend against this: Web browsers are big, complex things. Compiling one on the Pi would likely take hours, and may require a bit of know how to make it through that successfully (meaning there is a good chance it would just fail in puzzling ways).