I can’t figure out how to install the latest non-ESR Thunderbird on Fedora 41. Thunderbird for Windows is at version 136 but on Fedora it’s only 128esr. And I don’t want a Flatpak, though even that one seems older too.
The latest Thunderbird has a nice dark mode for message body 
Thanks!
I’m on a Betterbird also in 128 ESR version but work fine from flatpack on Kinoite
You can download the tarball for Linux from Thunderbird’s website and extract it to a location of your choosing (say under /opt/thunderbird) and run it from the command line. You’ll need to create an appropriate .desktop file under /usr/local/share/applications for it to properly register icons, MIME types, etc for your desktop environment.
Thank you, I’ll give it a try. So, there is no way to add a Mozilla repo or something?
Does it have dark mode for message body? The native 128esr doesn’t have it.
It doesn’t look like Thunderbird provides any repos like Firefox does for distros that use apt (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) nor does Thunderbird provide corresponding .rpm or .deb packages.
I haven’t tried the latest Thunderbird on my systems yet and was waiting for Fedora to update their packages when the time comes. That said, I have a spare laptop that I’m looking to try out either CentOS Stream or AlmaLinux Kitten and might give Thunderbird 136 in the coming weeks.
Right, I found Mozilla instructions for Debian but didn’t find anything for Fedora. On Debian, that allows me to install the latest Firefox (Debian only allows ESR by default) but Thunderbird is still stuck at 128ESR even with Mozilla distro added. Weird.
Thanks a lot!
So this worked. It seems to be working fine. Thank you!
Just one last question: are there any disadvantages to installing a program this way rather than rpm from a distro or flatpak? Besides not being able to update it with Discovery or dnf, but that’s no big deal. Though it seems that the Thunderbird auto update feature might work, not sure, but if it doesn’t then it’s fine too: downloading a new tarball every month or so it’s no big deal either.
The main downsides would be managing application updates via tarballs (or update scripts if included with the application) and integrating the application into your desktop environment and user profile. I did that for a couple of applications on Fedora and when playing around with Arch Linux or distros that don’t use either .rpm or .deb packages.
I usually prefer to go with Fedora packages first, unless if the Fedora packages are held back or have some known issues. My next preference would be installing via Flatpak or using AppImages if available (Nextcloud and 86Box being two that are provided as AppImages).
Another way to install and run applications that are packaged for different distros would be via Distrobox. There’s a bit more overhead with it, but it can be quite helpful if pre-built packages are only available for specific distros or distro versions and you don’t want to built from source.
So far it looks like this would be the only application that I’d need to install this way. All other applications that I use are available as rpms, flatpaks and one is available as appimage.
Thanks again!