How to update Thunderbird 78 to 91 on Ubuntu 20.04?
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
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:
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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.
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Find a PPA for Thunderbid 91. I could not find one, and I don't recommend PPAs typically.
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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
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Remove Thunderbird 78 with
apt, and use the appimage version of Thunderbird 91. -
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I know the instructions for the Mozilla tarball update are outdated, but should still work.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.
Previous answers did not find an appropriate ppa. Here is what I found:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt-get update
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.