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Manually Install Thunderbird 2 : Ubuntu 7.04

Since my exodus yesterday from Mutt I have installed and am playing with Thunderbird 2 for email. So far I don’t hate it like I did 1.5, but we’re still in the test stages. We’ll see how it all turns out. In any event I wanted to share with you how I installed Thunderbird 2 manually since it is not yet in the Ubuntu repositories.

Download Thunderbird 2. (Save to disk)
sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*
sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/local/bin/thunderbird
create a menu item: sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Thunderbird Comment=Thunderbird Mail Client Exec=thunderbird Icon=/opt/thunderbird/icons/mozicon16.xpm StartupNotify=true Terminal=false Type=Application Categories=Applications;Network

Enjoy the latest build while we wait for the official package to come down the pipe. You can be sure I’ll keep you updated on my thoughts on Thunderbird 2.

The Ubuntu Wiki has similar instructions and also contains details on having the repository version and the manually installed version side by side. See “Thunderbird New Version“.

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Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Friday, May 18, 2007, at 9:44 pm by Christer Edwards. Filed in EMail.

19 Comments

Fergus Doyle

Just wondered why install to /opt rather than /usr/local?

Posted on 18-May-07 at 10:56 pm | Permalink
Jim

http://www.getdeb.net also has Thunderbird 2 and Pidgin .deb packages.. I think. They seem to be down right now though.

Posted on 18-May-07 at 11:00 pm | Permalink
JGJones

While Thunderbird 2 is in /opt, and it does become available from Ubuntu ie in Universe – would it still update Thunderbird 1.5 that’s currently installed?

Fergus Doyle:

It’s better to use /opt – as you notice it’s empty, except for any other stuff that you install yourself (ie packages without a deb) – it’s also easier to remove, just delete the package directory.

In /usr/local – it may be shared with some installed software and you run the risk of messing something up.

Hope my poor explaination was enough to clear that up

Posted on 19-May-07 at 2:57 am | Permalink
anonymous

I read some of you postings and wonder, why do you made everything half done and/or a bit the wrong way ofusual Unix administration?

Extract it to /usr/local or even better: /usr/lib/thunderbird and do the path fixing in the bash-script ‘/usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird’

Posted on 19-May-07 at 4:37 am | Permalink
dlr.pe

Ubuntuzilla has a wiki on installing the latest versions of FF and TB, including scripts that back up your current installation then download, install, and configure the latest direct from Mozilla.

The script installs them to /opt, for the reasons noted above.

http://pykeylogger.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Ubuntuzilla

Posted on 19-May-07 at 5:00 am | Permalink
Alex Latchford

Hello Christer,

I am a member of the Ubuntu Mozilla Team, we have packaged Thunderbird 2.0 for Feisty, but it is in our testing repositories, this can be found here.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/PreviewArchives

We have also been working on it for Gutsy and 2.0 is now in the archives for that version.

(Please be aware that in the testing repositories there are also other builds of Mozilla Software, (Firefox 2.0.x pre-release update builds and Firefox 3 Alpha releases too, so please be careful!)).

Anyway, Thanks!

Alex.

Posted on 19-May-07 at 6:04 am | Permalink
thunderb

Ooh, the day you get one of those shiny nice official digital national id cards you will really love Thunderbird. It’s pretty much the only sane email application out there that really works with s/mime and smartcards.

Posted on 19-May-07 at 7:43 am | Permalink
Lane Lester

Another important step for me was to copy the /root/.mozilla-thunderbird folder to /root/.thunderbird so that I’d have all my 1.5 accounts and email available in 2.0.

Yes, I run as root. When I was a Windows user, I learned to take responsibility for my actions, and I transferred that maturity to Linux. [grin]

And good for you for putting 2.0 in /opt instead of the “official” location. I have /opt on a separate partition, so that I can have certain apps available on different distros in different partitions.

Posted on 19-May-07 at 11:00 am | Permalink
Pollywog

Under #4 create a menu item…
Where does all that stuff go, into what file? I use KDE and also Gnome and xfce

Posted on 19-May-07 at 3:27 pm | Permalink
Stefan Skotte

Try the shellscript in this blog, it works great, and can even uninstall it, if youw want.

http://ubuntuclub.com/node/151

http://pykeylogger.sourceforge.net/installnewthunderbird.sh

Posted on 19-May-07 at 3:41 pm | Permalink
deymer

ummm, i did everything to the dot, but it told me that thunderbird was not a valid directory or command… any suggestions?

Posted on 29-May-07 at 9:44 pm | Permalink
mr.prozac

I didn’t understand the steps above, to new for Linux OS. Just used Synaptic Package Manager.

Posted on 24-Jun-07 at 1:47 pm | Permalink
Taco

Thanks,

Posted on 06-Jul-07 at 6:43 pm | Permalink
Jay

Thank you for the great post.
Simple. Intuitive.

Posted on 23-Jul-07 at 9:37 pm | Permalink
Roger A

Lane Lester: Another way to do it is to run (in your home dir):

ln -s .mozilla-thunderbird .thunderbird

Beware, though. I’m not sure what will happen when running 1.x. I’ve done a quick test and it looks like it works okay. Going back again to 2.0 seems to work as well.

Posted on 20-Aug-07 at 1:02 am | Permalink
AndrewYoungIsGreat

Using Feisty Kubuntu, I did the following

1) Downloaded Thunderbird 2. (Saved it to desktop)
2) Launched Konsole
3) CD Desktop (navigated to my Desktop)
4) sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*
5) sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/local/bin/thunderbird
6) Created a menu item: sudo kate /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Thunderbird
Comment=Thunderbird Mail Client
Exec=thunderbird
Icon=/opt/thunderbird/icons/mozicon50.xpm
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Applications;Network

Basicly the same, but used kate instead of gedit and used a different icon

Posted on 02-Sep-07 at 8:55 am | Permalink
John

Amazing tutorial.

Posted on 04-Mar-08 at 10:01 am | Permalink
Gus Hauptfleisch

Exactly as intended.
As I am running Feisty and there is no apt for thunderbird2 it suited me perfectly.
Thank you.

Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 3:37 am | Permalink
Bob Coon

As Gus mentioned above, I’m also running Feisty. This tutorial worked perfectly.

I’m a long-time user of Win, but I’m exploring my options. I really like using Thunderbird under that OS, so I’m hoping that it runs as well under Ubuntu.

Thanks so much for putting together this tutorial; a little copy/paste and Ta Da!

You RULE!

Posted on 23-May-08 at 5:44 pm | Permalink

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