Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 1 Released (And How To Install It In Ubuntu Linux)

Mozilla released the first beta of the new Thunderbird 3.1 codename Lanikai.

Lanikai Beta 1 is built on top of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform. Notable changes include:

• Several fixes to improve upgrading from Thunderbird 2.
• Several fixes for auto complete, tabs, and activity manager.
• Several design improvements and corrections to the interface.
• Stability and memory improvements.
• 119 bugs fixed
  

For a complete change log, see this page.


Download Thunderbird 3.1 Lanikai Beta 1.

Install Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 1 in Ubuntu

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 1 is not available in the Mozilla Daily PPA (in fact, the last Thunderbird build in the PPA is from December, 2009), but you can still install the latest Thunderbird 3.1 beta 1.

The following commands will download Thunderbird 3.1 beta 1 (for En-US localisation, if you want to download Thunderbird 3.1 beta 1 for a different localisation, see THIS page and replace the download link), extract the archive, copy all the existing Thunderbird 3.0 profiles (if you installed Thunderbird 3.0 from the Mozilla daily PPA) to the new profiles location and then runs Thunderbird. Just copy/paste the commands:

wget -O - http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/3.1b1/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-3.1b1.tar.bz2 | tar xj -C ~
cp -r ~/.thunderbird-3.0/* ~/.thunderbird/
cd ~/thunderbird
./thunderbird

Since this version of Thunderbird is installed by using the package distributed by Mozilla, you'll have to create a shortcut on your desktop or panel. To do this, right click your panel, select "Add to panel", select "Custom application launcher", then under "Name" enter "Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 1" and in the "Command" field, enter: "/home/your_username/thunderbird/thunderbird", replacing "your_username" with your username.