sudo apt-get install bzip2 build-essential python zip libgtk2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libasound2-dev libogg-dev libxt-dev yasm libcurl4-openssl-dev mesa-common-dev mkdir ~/tmp cd ~/tmp wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/17.0.2/source/thunderbird-17.0.2.source.tar.bz2 rm -rf comm-release/ tar xvf thunderbird-17.0.2.source.tar.bz2 mkdir bldthunder17 cd bldthunder17/ ../comm-release/./configure --disable-necko-wifi make sudo make install
That took 122 minutes on a single core.
Checkinstall doesn't work and ends with segfault.