Thunderbird 6 was also released today, the same day when Firefox 6 was released. There were quite a few changes in this new version including:
Ubuntu Installation
Packages for all the current versions of Ubuntu, including Lucid, Maverick and Natty, are available through the 'thunderbird-stable' PPA. For installation, go to a Terminal and run:
Upgrade
If you already have Thunderbird installed and want to upgrade it, instead run:
PPA: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable
Other Linux
If you are running some other Linux than Ubuntu and its derivatives, you can download the tar.gz package from Mozilla's FTP servers. To do so, go to a Terminal and run:
Download
Download for 32-bit Users:
Download for 64-bit Users:
Temporary Solution:
As a temporary solution, you can follow these commands for extracting and running Thunderbird from the downloaded archive:
Permanent Solution:
As a permanent solution, you can extract the Thunderbird files into the '/opt' directory and creat a symbolic link which would let you run Thunderbird from the existing launchers as well.
To extract it, run this command from a Terminal:
Backup your existing Thunderbird executable:
Create the symbolic link to the new Thunderbird executable:
Now you can run Thunderbird from the existing launchers as well.
If you want to revert to your previous, distribution supported version, run:
- Thunderbird 6 is based on the new Mozilla Gecko 6 engine
- Default mail client check now works with newer Linux distributions
- Various other user interface fixes and improvements
- Numerous platform fixes that improve speed, performance, stability and security
Packages for all the current versions of Ubuntu, including Lucid, Maverick and Natty, are available through the 'thunderbird-stable' PPA. For installation, go to a Terminal and run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install thunderbird
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install thunderbird
If you already have Thunderbird installed and want to upgrade it, instead run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
PPA: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable
If you are running some other Linux than Ubuntu and its derivatives, you can download the tar.gz package from Mozilla's FTP servers. To do so, go to a Terminal and run:
Download for 32-bit Users:
wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/6.0/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-6.0.tar.bz2
Download for 64-bit Users:
wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/6.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/thunderbird-6.0.tar.bz2
As a temporary solution, you can follow these commands for extracting and running Thunderbird from the downloaded archive:
tar -xvjf thunderbird-6.0.tar.bz2
cd thunderbird
./thunderbird
cd thunderbird
./thunderbird
As a permanent solution, you can extract the Thunderbird files into the '/opt' directory and creat a symbolic link which would let you run Thunderbird from the existing launchers as well.
To extract it, run this command from a Terminal:
sudo tar -xvjf thunderbird-6.0.tar.bz2 -C /opt
Backup your existing Thunderbird executable:
sudo mv /usr/bin/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird-old
Create the symbolic link to the new Thunderbird executable:
sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird
Now you can run Thunderbird from the existing launchers as well.
If you want to revert to your previous, distribution supported version, run:
sudo mv /usr/bin/thunderbird-old /usr/bin/thunderbird
