Surely, NOT I. Discovered by accident! I am using version 15.0. I don’t know if this was in previous versions.

Wayno

Let’s face it. Rebranded software (Icedove for Thunderbird and Iceweasel for Firefox) on Debian works, but they are UBER old. And if you are trying to get 64 bit versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. Good luck!

IceWeasel (rebranded Firefox Version 3!) is pre-installed. However Icedove does NOT come pre-installed.

The programmes on the mozilla site, are 32 bit critters. Which don’t always work in a 64 bit environment.

As a minimum, if you want to use the 32 bit Firefox or Thunderbird off the mozilla site, you will need to have at least the following 32 bit libraries installed on your 64 bit system:


sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk


Fortunately, I ran into Diopter on #debian on freenode.org

Here is where the latest stable 64 bit version are stored:

NOTE: IF YOU GET A 404 NOT FOUND, IT MEANS THAT THEY HAVE TAKEN THE SITE OFFLINE FOR AWHILE. TRY AGAIN LATER.

For the latest stable 64 bit Firefox

For the latest stable 64 bit Thunderbird

I have had some issues with the stable releases. So I use the nightly builds.

Nightly build for 64 bit Firefox (unstable)

Nightly build for 64 bit Thunderbird (unstable)

1. Once you have them downloaded, lets untar them to the right directory.


cd /usr/local


2. Now untar:


sudo tar -xjvf ~/Downloads/(name of file goes here)


-x says we want to extract the tar
-j says it is a bzip2 file
-v says we want verbose (lots of) output
-f says use archive mode

3. Rename the old “firefox” (icedove) in /usr/bin
NOTE that the # and anything that follows is a comment and does not need to be coded.


cd /usr/bin # go to /usr/bin directory
sudo mv firefox firefox.icedove


4. Now create a link to the new Firefox we just installed. I want it system wide so we need to create a symlink in /usr/bin to where the files are stored.

As always the octothorpe (# is a comment and need NOT be coded)

For Firefox:


cd /usr/bin #change to the usr/bin director
sudo ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox .


or /usr/local/thunderbird/thunderbird

NOTE: THE PERIOD AT THE END IS SIGNIFICANT. IT SAYS PLACE THE PROGRAM (SYMLINK) RIGHT HERE!

5. to confirm that you have everything right:


which firefox


and you will get output that looks like:

/usr/bin/firefox

(or thunderbird)

If you go to /usr/bin and do an ls -l you will see:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 May 5 19:01 firefox -> /usr/local/firefox/firefox

(or thunderbird)

Thanks Joe and Loni!

Wayno

This requires an intermediate skill level.

Installing unstable software, can cause your system to crash. This is NOT recommended for n00bs. The how to add the ppa’s are contained in the link below. But again, if you don’t know what this is: DON’T DO THIS, unless you are sure.

PPA for Firefox / Thunderbird Versions 5/6/7/8

Version 3.X of Firefox kills my Ubuntu 10.10 (AMD 64) System. But version 6 and beyond run fine.

This is what Thunderbird V 5 looks like:

Thanks again, Joe.

Wayno

I had to schlep around for this.

How to display only unread messages in Mozilla Thunderbird

Wayno

From a friend:

Thunderbird can seem a bit sluggish. Here’s a way to improve the performance:

1. In Thunderbird, click on:

Edit/Preferences/Advanced Tab

UNCLICK Enable Global Search and Indexer