Manually Install Thunderbird 2 : Ubuntu 7.04

By | 2007/05/18

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.

  1. Download Thunderbird 2. (Save to disk)
  2. sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*
  3. sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/local/bin/thunderbird
  4. 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“.

21 thoughts on “Manually Install Thunderbird 2 : Ubuntu 7.04

  1. Pingback: Sexy Sexy Penguins»Blog Archive » Thunderbird 2.0 - Fedora Core 6

  2. Fergus Doyle

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

  3. 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 🙂

  4. 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’

  5. 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.

  6. 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. 🙂

  7. 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.

  8. Pollywog

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

  9. deymer

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

  10. mr.prozac

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

  11. Pingback: Thunder(bird) and Lightning! : Read and Write access to Google Calendar : Ubuntu Tutorials : Breezy - Dapper - Edgy - Feisty

  12. Jay

    Thank you for the great post.
    Simple. Intuitive.

  13. 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.

  14. 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

  15. Gus Hauptfleisch

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

  16. 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!

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