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At the risk of sounding like a complete noob... "how do I actually use the updater included with the download of thunderbird 91?"

I downloaded and extracted the TB91 archive from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ . I see an updater patch, but I do not see a basic "Read Me" to explain how to use the updater patch.

I tried sudo chmod +x updater, then $ ./updater , but get errors.

thanks

Archisman Panigrahi
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nightwatch
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3 Answers3

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First, excuse me if I am making a wrong assumptions here. I assume you have Thunderbird 78 installed via the Ubuntu package manager and you want to upgrade to Thunderbird 91.

There are, at least, five ways, in principle:

  1. Remove the apt version, and install the Thunderbird 91 snap, by choosing the "candidate" channel instead of "stable". This is a very safe way to upgrade, and recommended.

  2. Find a PPA for Thunderbid 91. I could not find one, and I don't recommend PPAs typically.

  3. Use the downloaded tar-archive from the Thunderbird website. I don't think the "update" is a program you are supposed to run, you should follow the instructions here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-thunderbird-linux

  4. Remove Thunderbird 78 with apt, and use the appimage version of Thunderbird 91.

  5. Yet another alternative is a flatpak, available at https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.mozilla.Thunderbird

I know the instructions for the Mozilla tarball update are outdated, but should still work. It is up to you to place the extracted tar-archive to a place that is convenient for you. I personally would put it in ~/thunderbid and have a symbolic link to the thundebird binary at ~/bin.

You should either a) remove the old Thunderbird 78 via apt/package manager or b) at least make sure you don't accidentally run the old version by creating custom launchers for the new version and setting up your path correctly. I would remove the old Thunderbird completely. Mixing the two versions might lead to some serious weirdness.

Archisman Panigrahi
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gaussian
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5

Previous answers did not find an appropriate ppa. Here is what I found:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

It upgraded thunderbird from 78 to 91 like a charm on my Ubuntu 18.04.6LTS. I am not an expert, but this ppa looks quite legit, is thoroughly documented (https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa), and is recommended by various blogs.

Archisman Panigrahi
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billjoie
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Supplemental update: According to OMGUbuntu this is coming to the 20.04 repos soon because of a security issue.

A security vulnerability affecting the Thunderbird 78.x series both builds offer is being actively exploited in the wild. But as upstream support for Thunderbird 78.x has ended the flaw is unlikely be ever be patched.

For an Ubuntu LTS releases that’s a major issue.

So, to ensure its users are not affected, Ubuntu developers are backporting the latest Thunderbird 91 release (which is an extended support release, thankfully) to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 21.04.

Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/11/thunderbird-91-backport-ubuntu-18-04-20-04-lts

Organic Marble
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