Thunderbird

[manyroads]

Personally I find T'bird a necessary evil. My arch machines are at v 78+ and here I'm on 68. My data files are kept in either IMAP or archived and shared from Dropbox. Things work pretty smoothly, in the main. Personally I would not use snaps or flatpak for email unless you want to keep your email all on a single machine. Those self-contained (containerized?) environments are tough to synch across various divergent platforms.

[tb75252]

There is no direct "upgrade" from 68 to 7x in Thunderbird. The Thunderbird website discusses that there were too many differences, lots os add-on's that were not brought over etc, and there is a lot of discussions about what you need to do to upgrade - manually. So it would make sense to have 68 be 'the one' but have access to 78.

When I made the switch a while back, I had numerous issues and ended up rolling back until a later date. (I do have ONE machine on 78, the rest I have left in 68 mainly so that I can keep my addon's I prefer. )

Ok, I'll keep on using v. 68.
Just out of curiosity, is it possible to install two distinct (separate) versions of Thunderbird, or any other software for that matter?

[CharlesV]

It is possible actually. I had an issue with a 6x version and used a 7x version to get around it. Once I found exactly what the issue was, then I wanted to roll back to 6x. I found that I could load BOTH versions, however, I could not use the same profile in both versions as the 7x would add some additional profile info and cause a problem - simple to get around, but a little tricky.

I did find that I could create an entirely NEW profile in a different location and then I had both up and running. Note - the Thunderbird Profile.ini is the problem, so you have to ... play around a little to get them both operational, but it can be done. (Not sure I would maintain that for long as something *will* bite you there.. but it is possible.

[tony37]

It is possible actually. I had an issue with a 6x version and used a 7x version to get around it. Once I found exactly what the issue was, then I wanted to roll back to 6x. I found that I could load BOTH versions

maybe because you used the flatpak version? with flatpak you can have a 'normal' and a flatpak version, the normal one will have its data in ~/.thunderbird, the flatpak one in ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird

[tony37]

Update: these instructions are already obsolete, as you can now install version 78 from MX Test

If someone really wants to use the latest Thunderbird version from the Debian Security repo, instead of installing a (huge) flatpak, you can make a file called /etc/apt/preferences.d/thunderbird_from_debian_security with the following content:

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Package: thunderbird* lightning* calendar-google-provider
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: 1001

For the lazy among us, you can use just this one command to create the file + content:

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echo -e 'Package: thunderbird* lightning* calendar-google-provider\nPin: release o=Debian\nPin-Priority: 1001' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/thunderbird_from_debian_security > /dev/null

Then you can do

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sudo apt upgrade

Remarkably, apt will tell you it will downgrade thunderbird but that's because of the peculiar version numbering.
But of course I can't guarantee any smooth transition from 68 to 78 and please consider doing a backup of your ~/.thunderbird folder.
If you'd want to revert to the MX version, remove the preferences file with:

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sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/thunderbird_from_debian_security

and then again

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sudo apt upgrade

[BV206]

What I do is use the .tar file from the Thunderbird web site to install the latest version.

[tb75252]

What I do is use the .tar file from the Thunderbird web site to install the latest version.

But that would overwrite any previously installed version of Thunderbird, right?

[CharlesV]

I also used the download from the website - no flatpak As I recall, I saved the tar contents to a different folder, leaving the original in tact. Then ran it from that new location. (ie 6x version as installed, 7x version folder saved to a different location - from the tar file. )

And I do agree SAVE your original thunderbird folder - AND your profile mail area BEFORE you do ANYTHING :-)

[Stevo]

I got a PM from Mike that he's building the new version for at least MX 19. We had a little trouble at first adapting our modifications for the new version.

[mmikeinsantarosa]

I was finally able to get thunderbird-78.3.1-2 to build for buster and sent it up last night. Fortunately, Tim caught the potential for a real mess for anybody upgrading from a 68.n so he put it in test. - Mike