14.04...why no Thunderbird included?

[GregM]

I just installed 14.04 off a disk and was surprised to find no Thunderbird included. They have FF but no Thunderbird.
I spent a day trying to figure our where to get an older copy as the current 52.1.1 has some bugs that make me not happy.
I finally gave up and installed the current bug fest.

Just surprised they didn't include one.

[claydoh]

Kubuntu focuses on providing and showcasing KDE's Plamsa desktop and software wherever possible. Kontact is the obvious choice, given that criteria. At one time Thunderbird was on its way to being unmaintained or even dropped by Mozilla (and may still end up dying off still, albeit at a slower pace)

We include Mozilla's Firefox as there is no good, full-featured KDE web browser, and FF is widely used and respected.
The same thing for Libreoffice, basically as KDE's Calligra does not save back to MS file formats, and LO is widely used and provides more features.

[Qqmike]

Hi GregM. Yep, you're not alone, as some of us here with 14.04 are using Thunderbird. I think most of us are doing OK with it, though -- I certainly am, but I will agree there might be a bug or snag here and there, but so far no show-stoppers for me. In the past, I got my T-Bird from various places & so on. This time, mine just comes from the repositories through Muon Package Manager. Rod J, a well-known user here can also chime in, but I think he's doing OK with T-Bird in 14.04, as well. Example: Some months ago, the notifier broke -- that pop-up in the system tray that informs you you have a new email in Inbox. With a recent update (maybe about a month ago +/-), that got fixed, wonderfully, magically! So, there's also some good news floating around on this matter

[GregM]

Actually I was hoping to find a version of Tbird that is not current.
52.1.1 has some buggy stuff going on and I wanted to revert back.
Same with 16.04.

I thought there was a away to install an older Tbird but I'm not really talented enough at this stuff to know how to download it wherever it is and install it. I tried for a couple days to install an older version from a tar file, but finally gave up. I'm guessing all the components just weren't all there as I followed various instructions several times and still a no go

[claydoh]

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/

There are versions both older and newer there.
These files are self-contained and do not need installation, just need to be extracted somewhere, and then double-clicking the 'thunderbird' file found inside.

[GregM]

Great
I now have an excellent copy of T-bird 45.8.0
The only problem at this point is that I have to open Dolphin to start it (by double clicking on the file)

Is there a way to make an icon/link to that file on the desktop or panel?

I am encouraged
Thanks

[Bings]

If you right click the desktop, go to the "create new" sub menu and click "link to application" that will bring up a dialog box for you to do so. You can then drag it onto a panel if you so wish.

[GregM]

Excellent!
Thanks