Willing wheels

Thunderbird-3 is out for quite a moment right now, and carries with it a remarkable imap support (far better than current implementation on thunderbird-2). And you know what? You’re still stuck with thunderbird2 on lucid lynx.

If you still want to install thunderbird natively and try all the super cool new featues (did I speak about the incredibly improved imap support?), proceed as follow:

1. edit /etc/apt/sources.list (sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list) and append the following two lines:
   

   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu lucid main
   deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu lucid main

2. add corresponding pgp key:

   sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE

3. update apt:

   sudo apt-get update

4. install thunderbird-3:

   sudo apt-get install thunderbird-3.0 thunderbird-3.0-gnome-support

   note: if you run “apt-cache search ^thunderbird”, you will see that even newest versions of thunderbird are listed (such as v3.1). Pick up the one you prefer. As of today, stable release is 3.0.1 => I installed v3.0, 3.1 is still in beta. Beta versions are available because we added a daily mozilla repository.

5. open newly installed thunderbird: alt+F2: “thunderbird-3.0″

That’s it.

Note

Note that doing it this way, (rather than installing a tar file) apt is still in control of installed softwares.
Of importance is also the fact that currently installed thunderbird is still there (on v2). I did not uninstalled it, because ubuntu package managers will automatically upgrade it to a later version when they find it appropriate, whereas newly installed version (v3.0) has version on its package name => it won’t automatically upgrade from v3.0 to v3.1.
By keeping generic “thunderbird”  package installed, when I will see it upgrade to v3.0 I will simply remove all previously 3.0 specific installed packages and continue with generic package. We have best of both world: easy update and still outstanding imap support in the mean time.

sources

• http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/08/howto-install-thunderbird-3-beta-on.html

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 1:51 am and is filed under unix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.