Fabien Tassin maintains a PPA repository of recently released and pre-release Mozilla software at: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa
With Ubuntu Karmic its fairly easy to add this repository to the list of sources aptitude will use.
Open a command line terminal and use the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily
sudo apt-get update
You can then install Thunderbird 3 using Synaptic Package Manager or from the command line:
apt-get install thunderbird-3.0
If you are going to migrate from Thunderbird 2 to 3 do not start Thunderbird yet!
In order to smoothly migrate your profile from Thunderbird 2, you should do the following:
- Uninstall Thunderbird 2.0 using Synaptic or Aptitude
- Backup the directory ~/.mozilla-thunderbird
- Make a symbolic link from .thunderbird-3.0 to .mozilla-thunderbird using
cd ~/
ln -fs .mozilla-thunderbird .thunderbird-3.0
Then start Thunderbird 3.0 (You will actually find that its under a menu item called Shredder 3 Mail/News). I am not sure why but I suspect its to do with licensing restrictions on distributing binaries
Have fun. And remember - make a backup before you start
