Thunderbird 3.1.2 has been released, adding fixes to improve stability and the user interface. I’m using Fedora 13 and the update isn’t available yet in the official repositories.

I could use an unofficial repo, such as Remi, to get the updates more quickly, but the easiest way for me is to use the precompiled binaries from Mozilla, available for download as a tar.bz2 archive. This way, I’ll always get notified when an update is available and -just two clicks away — I’ll be running the latest version.

Here’s how you can do it:

  • download the archive to /opt
    $ cd /opt ; wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/3.1.2/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-3.1.2.tar.bz2
  • unpack it
    tar jxvf thunderbird-3.1.2.tar.bz2
  • remove the tarball
    rm thunderbird-3.1.2.tar.bz2
  • run it using
    /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird
  • add a launcher to the panel — Right click on the main panel -> Add to Panel -> Custom Application Launcher -> Add

You can choose an icon for the new launcher from

/opt/thunderbird/chrome/icons/default

That’s it. Make sure you configure it to automatically check for updates (Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Update) and you’ll always run the latest version:

Related Posts: