The native desktop Email client Thunderbird releases its latest version 78 with major improvements and bug fixes. Here’s what’s new.
Thunderbird 78 is an ESR release aka Extended-Support release which means it is the most stable release to date. The Thunderbird team boasts that this release improves the overall experience of the email client making it easier to use for general to advanced users including enterprises.
Table of Contents
What’s New in Thunderbird 78
- The core of any email client is the compose window where you write new emails. The compose window in Thunderbird 78 revamped to use less space, easier to find basic options.
- A new dark mode introduced which gives you native dark look for the entire application.
- Calendar and Tasks are now integrated into Thunderbird 78. And you do not need any add-ons for them. It is part of Thunderbird 78 core now.
- New Account creation and setup windows are redesigned to make it easier to understand for users.
- New folder icons and colors are introduced
- Thunderbird can be minimized to the system tray for Windows users. This was one of the most requested features.
- Upcoming Feature in 78.2: Thunderbird will introduce the end-to-end email encryption via OpenPGP. This is currently achieved in Thunderbird by using the Enigmail add-on. However, this future release will bring this into the Thunderbird Core as a native feature.
A detailed changelog is available here.
How to Install Email Client Thunderbird 78 in Ubuntu, Fedora
Fedora-based systems
If you are looking for the stock version of Thunderbird for Fedora, you can open the terminal and run below command to install the earlier Thunderbird 68.
sudo dnf install thunderbird
For the latest Thunderbird 78, you can download the latest Thunderbird 78 from the below link and extract the package. In the extracted files, double click on thunderbird executable to launch the latest Thunderbird.
Ubuntu-based systems
If you are looking for a stable and stock version of Thunderbird for Ubuntu-based systems you can run below command from the terminal to install. It will be the earlier release of Thunderbird which is version 68.
sudo apt install thunderbird
You can download the latest Thunderbird 78 from the below link and extract the package. In the extracted files, double click on thunderbird executable to launch the latest Thunderbird.
Remember, Thunderbird 78 requires the below packages to run. So, if you are running from the extracted latest version, then you have to manually install these dependencies. If you are running Fedora Workstation’s latest version you do not need to install any additional dependencies at all as all are included.
GTK+ 3.14 or higher GLib 2.22 or higher Pango 1.22 or higher X.Org 1.0 or higher (1.7 or higher is recommended) libstdc++ 4.8.1 or higher glibc 2.17 or higher NetworkManager 0.7 or higher DBus 1.0 or higher GNOME 2.16 or higher
If you already have Thunderbird installed via apt or repo or dnf it will not be updated at the moment to 78. So you have to wait till your Linux distribution packages the latest version.
Via Thunderbird blog.
