I recently built myself my first 64bit Ubuntu (10.04) machine. I was pleased to discover that everything I was doing on my 32 machines was doable on this new 64bit machine. Then I ran into a single particularly annoying snag.
Ubuntu was including Thunderbird v3.1.11 with their release. Lightning was not released as 64bit for v3.1.11 only for v5, and the Ubuntuzilla repository wasn’t including 64bit builds of Thunderbird. I felt cornered.
(Note: I am told UbuntuZilla is now including the 64bit builds.)
After some investigation and inquiries made into the Ubuntu and Mozilla communities I was able to cobble together an elegant (read: simple) solution. Fear not, friends; you can do it too.
First you will want to add the Mozilla stable repository. You can do this with a single command from your Terminal:
[CODE=BASH]
##
# The following command adds the PPA (repository) to your system:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
# If you have Thunderbird v3.1.11 installed run these commands to move to v5:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
# If you have not yet installed Thunderbird you can install it by running this command:
sudo apt-get install thunderbird
##[/CODE]
The first command installs the required PPA repository on your system so that Synaptic, Software Center, and apt-get can locate the most recent versions of Thunderbird. The second and third lines will update your system if you already have Thunderbird v3.1.11 installed. If you don’t have v3.1.11 installed, just run the first command to get the PPA and then run that last command to install Thunderbird.
If you feel awkward on the command line you can just run the first command and then use Synaptic to install the software or Update Manager to run the updates, but as you can see it’s not all that intimidating.
Hope you find this as useful as I have.
Happy hunting.
Thanks a lot for the helpful post.
I wonder if ‘firefox’ should be substituted with ‘thunderbird’ in the first command?
From :
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
To:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
Anywho, that’s what i needed on my 64bit Natty :) Cheers, k
Thanks, Karl. I have corrected the post.
As a sidenote, you can use the firefox ppa for keeping Firefox current.
I’m running 64-bit Natty with Thunderbird 3.1.11 but sudo apt-get upgrade does nothing and sudo apt-get install thunderbird says thunderbird is already the newest version. I already had this ppa enabled (to get Thunderbird 3.1.11 installed if I recall correctly). I’ve tried adding the ppa again just to make sure and it says there was no change. Do you have any suggestions for me?
Hmmm… What do you show in Synaptic under “thunderbird”? Do you get an error when you seek updates through the update manager (this may be due to a lacking key for the ppa)? Make sure your Software Sources —> Other Software —> Edit for that source lists your Distribution as “natty” (I looked at the web page and they show data for natty so it ought to function just like my lucid does).
For those interested, you can find the key here:
http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x9BDB3D89CE49EC21
I’ll sort out the command later and post that back here as well, probably update the post to include it.
Found here: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable
Thanks so much. This was very helpful. It worked like a charm!
Ubuntu 10.04 64bit
ThinkPad T61p
Excellent to learn of your success.