@jrsilvey, whenever I install something not in the repos, like Firefox Nightly or in this case Thunderbird, I untar it into /opt, change the folder's permissions and ownership to me, and make a .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications; many moons ago I was taught that's the "right" way to do it, but I have no idea if that's true. I've heard, however, that Solus discourages use of /opt that way; in that case, you could also put the Thunderbird folder in your /home directory and not need to worry about changing any permissions or ownership.
So, for example (and I have a habit of putting downloads into /tmp until I know I want to keep them, but will change this to the more "standard" ~/Downloads folder):
- Download Thunderbird 91.1.0 from https://www.thunderbird.net.
- untar the file into /opt:
sudo tar xvf ~/Downloads/thunderbird-91.1.0.tar bz2 -C /opt/; just in case you don't know, the "C" flag, which is case-sensitive, expands the archive into a directory of your choosing.
- Change the permissions of the folder to "read, write, execute" with
sudo chmod -R 0755 /opt/thunderbird; the "R" flag simply makes the command recursive.
- Change the ownership of the folder to your user with
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /opt/thunderbird; make sure to replace $USER with your username.
- Make a .desktop file—e.g.,
nano ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop—for launching; a really basic one would look like this:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Thunderbird
GenericName=Email Client
Exec=/opt/thunderbird/thunderbird
Icon=/opt/thunderbird/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Terminal=false
Alternatively, you could install the older version of Thunderbird in the repos and copy the desktop file for that found in /usr/share/applications/ into ~/.local/share/applications/ and then uninstall that version of Thunderbird. That's a slightly lengthier process, but one I like because it will allow you to customize all the right-click shortcuts associated with the Thunderbird icon. You would just edit the copied .desktop file to contain the correct /opt/thunderbird/ locations.
No need to mess with any AppImage stuff.
