Localized Lightning for Thunderbird 60 on Linux

Non-English Linux users of Lightning, the calendar extension for the Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client, must be having a hard time these days.

Both Thunderbird and Lightning are available from the major Linux distributions’ software repositories. However, with the exception of Debian, the Lightning extension from these repos are available in English only.

Most non-English users at this point would look to Lightning from the Thunderbird add-ons site. Versions available here are only compatible with Thunderbird 52 or older though and stop working in Thunderbird 60.

Some would suggest installing a beta version of Lightning, available from Mozilla’s archive site, that is compatible with Thunderbird 60. This works, but using beta software isn’t ideal.

Until Mozilla and the Linux distros figure this out, if you are one of the affected users, there are two ways to obtain a release version of Lightning for your preferred locale:

Extract Lightning from a Thunderbird release download

1. Download the Linux (or Linux 64-bit, either one will work) version of Thunderbird for your language from the Thunderbird site. This should be a .tar.bz2 archive.
   • Note: Specific versions of Lightning are paired with specific versions of Thunderbird. If you are not using the latest version of Thunderbird (60.2.1 at the time of this writing), you can download the release package for your version at Mozilla’s archive site.
2. Expand the .tar.bz2 archive, and in the thunderbird/distribution/extensions directory, you will find the .xpi package for the Lightning extension ({e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}.xpi).

Download Lightning from my Dropbox shared folder

In the interest of saving time, I’ve already extracted Lightning for every available language. Select the version of Thunderbird you are using, then download Lightning for your locale:

• Thunderbird 60.0 – Lightning 6.2
• Thunderbird 60.2.1 – Lightning 6.2.2.1
• Thunderbird 60.3.0 – Lightning 6.2.3
• Thunderbird 60.3.1 – Lightning 6.2.3.1
• Thunderbird 60.3.2 – Lightning 6.2.3.2
• Thunderbird 60.3.3 – Lightning 6.2.3.3
• Thunderbird 60.4.0 – Lightning 6.2.4
• Thunderbird 60.5.0 – Lightning 6.2.5
• Thunderbird 60.5.1 – Lightning 6.2.5.1
• Thunderbird 60.5.2 – Lightning 6.2.5.2
• Thunderbird 60.5.3 – Lightning 6.2.5.3
• Thunderbird 60.6.0 – Lightning 6.2.6
• Thunderbird 60.6.1 – Lightning 6.2.6.1
• Thunderbird 60.7.0 – Lightning 6.2.7
• Thunderbird 60.7.1 – Lightning 6.2.7.1
• Thunderbird 60.7.2 – Lightning 6.2.7.2
• Thunderbird 60.8.0 – Lightning 6.2.8
• Thunderbird 60.9.0 – Lightning 6.2.9
• Thunderbird 68.0 – Lightning 68.0
• Thunderbird 68.1.0 – Lightning 68.1.0
• Thunderbird 68.1.1 – Lightning 68.1.1
• Thunderbird 68.1.2 – Lightning 68.1.2
• Thunderbird 68.2.0 – Lightning 68.2.0
• Thunderbird 68.2.1 – Lightning 68.2.1
• Thunderbird 68.2.2 – Lightning 68.2.2

Staying updated

Unfortunately, installing Lightning this way means automatic updates do not work. I will try to keep this post updated with newer versions of Lightning as they are released.

In the meantime, you can also subscribe to your distro’s bug report to stay informed, add your voice or even contribute a fix:

• Arch Linux: FS#53781 – [thunderbird] Include translations for Lightning
• Fedora: Bug 1626827 – Lightning in Thunderbird 60 does not contain localization files for any locale
• openSUSE: Bug 939153 – Thunderbird integrated Lightning calendar is not properly localized
• Ubuntu: Bug #545778 “xul-ext-lightning is only available in English”

Updates

• November 7, 2018: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.3
• November 28, 2018: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.3.1
• December 1, 2018: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.3.2
• December 22, 2018: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.3.3 and 6.2.4
• January 30, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.5
• February 17, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.5.1
• March 9, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.5.2 and 6.2.5.3
• March 24, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.6
• March 26, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.6.1
• May 23, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.7
• June 14, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.7.1
• June 22, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.7.2
• July 11, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 6.2.8
• August 30, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 68.0
• September 7, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 60.9.0
• October 4, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 68.1.0 and 68.1.1
• October 21, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 68.1.2
• November 2, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 68.2.0 and 68.2.1
• November 9, 2019: Added downloads for Lightning 68.2.2
• December 10, 2019: It appears the extension available at addons.thunderbird.net has been receiving updates again, so manually downloading and installing Lightning isn’t necessary anymore.