GLib 2.22 to run Thunderbird

Question

I am running 64bit elementary OS 0.3 Freya and I would like to use Thunderbird as an email client for my Gmail account. I have downloaded it from the website as the Software Centre has Thunderbird 31 and Gmail requires Thunderbird 38 or newer.

However when I try to run Thunderbird I get:

XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /home/gthomson/thunderbird/libxul.so:
libdbus-glib-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM.

I know that Thunderbird requires GLib 2.22 or higher to run but I don't know what package I should download to fix this issue.?

Answer 1

I recommend using the official Thunderbird PPA instead.

• Add ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-next to your sources,
• Update the software sources,
• Then upgrade Thunderbird.

Commandline option:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-next
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Answer 2

Thunderbird 38.2 is now available in the official repositories. I strongly recommend to use the official stable release instead of an unstable beta repository.
In case you have been following RolandiXor's answer, you need to remove the ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-next repository, update your sources, and reinstall Thunderbird:

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

If you didn't install any beta version, just install Thunderbird:

sudo apt-get install thunderbird

Answer 3

In general, to search the repositories for a package you are looking for you can use apt-cache search. In your case:

apt-cache search libdbus-glib

There you will get a list of packages that have a match. Packages ending in "-dev" or "-dbg" are more oriented for developers or those compiling applications. "-doc" are document oriented packages. I believe in your case you want the libdbus-glib-1-2 package.

To install:

sudo apt-get install libdbus-glib-1-2