Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source fully featured, secure and very functional email application and RSS feed reader that's easy to set up and customize - and it's loaded with great features. The application, available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, includes support for both IMAP and POP email.

What’s new in Thunderbird 12

1. Global Search results now include message extracts in the results
2. Various improvements to RSS feed subscription and general feed handling
3. Various security fixes
4. Thunderbird now supports add-ons that provide different types of local mail storage.

This howto's guide has two methods for installation of Thunderbird 12 on RHEL 6.2/6.1/6/5.8/5.7, CentOS 6.2/6.1/6/5.8/5.7, Fedora 16/15/14, Ubuntu 12.04/11.10/11.04, Debian and Linux Mint. The First method uses YUM repositories to install and the Second method uses Source code installation.

Method 1 : Install Thunderbird 12 on RHEL 6.2/6.1/6, CentOS 6.2/6.1/6, Fedora 16/15/14, Ubuntu 12.04/11.10/11.04, Debian and Linux Mint using Repositories

Installing Thunderbird 12 on RHEL/CentOS 6.2/6.1/6 & Fedora 16/15/14

Step 1: Installing Remi Repositories

Let's install dependency packages for RHEL/CentOS 6.2/6.1/6 and Fedora 14. (Note: Currently not required to install remi dependency on Fedora 16 & 15).

## Remi Dependency on RHEL/CentOS 6.2/6.1/6 ##
rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm

## Remi Dependency on Fedora 14 ##
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm 
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-14.rpm

Step 2: Checking Thunderbird 12 Availability

Let's check the available Thunderbird versions using following command.

## On RHEL/CentOS 6.2/6.1/6 and Fedora 14 ##
yum --enablerepo=remi list thunderbird

## On Fedora 16 ##
yum list thunderbird

## On Fedora 15 ##
yum --enablerepo=updates-testing list thunderbird

Step 3: Installing Thunderbird 12

Let's install the Thunderbird 12 using the following commands.

## On RHEL/CentOS 6.2/6.1/6 and Fedora 14 ##
 yum --enablerepo=remi install thunderbird

## On Fedora 16 ##
yum install thunderbird

## On Fedora 15 ##
yum --enablerepo=updates-testing install thunderbird

Step 4: Uninstalling Thunderbird 12

To uninstall Thunderbird, simply run following command.

yum remove thunderbird

Installing Thunderbird 12 on Ubuntu 12.04/11.10/11.04, Debian & Linux Mint

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install thunderbird 

Launching Thunderbird 12

To launch Thunderbird 12 using terminal, execute following command.

thunderbird

Method 2 : Install Thunderbird 12 on RHEL 6.2/6.1/6/5.8/5.7, CentOS 6.2/6.1/6/5.8/5.7, Fedora 16/15/14/13/12, Ubuntu 11.10/11.04/10.10/10.04, Debian and Linux Mint. Using Source Code

Installing Thunderbird 12 Using Source Code

To install Thunderbird 12 using source code on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian & Linux Mint run the following commands.

Step 1: Downloading and Installing Thunderbird 12

cd /opt
wget http://mozilla.mtk.nao.ac.jp/pub/mozilla.org//thunderbird/releases/12.0/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-12.0.tar.bz2
tar xvf thunderbird-12.0.tar.bz2
cd thunderbird/
ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird

Step 2: Laucnhing Thunderbird 12

thunderbird

Step 3: Uninstalling Thunderbird 12 Using Source Code

To uninstall Thunderbird, simply run following command.

sudo rm -rf /opt/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird