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Sebastian Stark
Asked: 2018-08-08 06:28:31 +0800 CST

How to try out Thunderbird 60?

  • 772

What is the recommended way of trying out the new Thunderbird 60 release on Ubuntu 18.04? I see several options:

  • simply download the prebuilt package from https://www.thunderbird.net/. Will it use my existing profile or does it expect some other path?
  • install some PPA (which one?)
  • install some snap or flatpak version (how to get my existing profile into it?)
  • something else?

However, I would like to use my existing profile for testing, so I won't have to recreate the whole configuration. In addition I would like to be able to easily revert in case it does not work for me. Of course I will backup my profile before, just thought I should mention this.

Best would be if I could switch easily between the two versions for some time.

thunderbird ppa snap 18.04

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can just download the newest version here https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/ Unpack it to a folder and click on executable "thunderbird". For me it found my profile automatically and I was able to have a look at the new version.

    My old installation is not affected in anyway.

    • 5

  2. Also, if you want your launcher to launch thunderbird 60 instead of 52, you will need to change the launcher path from thunderbird %u to wherever you saved it. In my case I saved it in ~/.local/share/ so my overall path was /home/username/.local/share/thunderbird/thunderbird

    sudo nano /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

    Find Exec=thunderbird %u and change to Exec=/whereyousavedit/thunderbird %u

    Then it will work perfectly. I'm assuming I will need to undo this once thunderbird 60 comes out in the repo, but this works for now.

    • 3

  3. Thunderbird 60 is now available in the snap store https://snapcraft.io/thunderbird

    It's still flagged as edge so you need to issue the following command to install it:

    sudo snap install thunderbird --edge
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  4. The best option still is to download Thunderbird debian package from here: https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/thunderbird/download So you still be able to remove it at any time or upgrade with Ubuntu package when it will be available. Snap is crap. Don't use it.

    • 0

  5. You can install it from the official PPA maintained by the Mozilla Team (you don't need to remove the currently-installed version of Thunderbird).

    To upgrade currently installed package:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt upgrade
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